Advanced Python Programming

The concept of thread synchronization

Before we jump into an actual Python example, let's explore the concept of synchronization in computer science. As you saw in previous chapters, sometimes, it is undesirable to have all portions of a program execute in a parallel manner. In fact, in most contemporary concurrent programs, there are sequential portions and concurrent portions of the code; furthermore, even inside of a concurrent portion, some form of coordination between different threads/processes is also required.

Thread/process synchronization is a concept in computer science that specifies various mechanisms to ensure that no more than one concurrent thread/process can process and execute a particular program portion at a time; this ...