Daniel Arbuckle's Mastering Python

The lock object

Lock objects are the simplest of the synchronization tools. They have a pair of methods called acquire and release, as shown in the following code example:

After a process calls acquire, any other process that calls acquire is forced to wait until the first process calls release. Then, the acquire call in one of the waiting processes returns, allowing that process to proceed. In other words, code between an acquire call and release call can count on being the only code accessing whatever data the lock object is protecting.

Notice that the lock object doesn't know what data it's protecting. It's up to us as programmers to define ...