How To Start A Thread In Python

In this tutorial, we will discuss how to start a thread in Python. Threading is a powerful programming concept that allows you to run multiple tasks concurrently.

Python supports various methods to perform threading, and this tutorial will guide you through a simple example of creating and starting threads using the threading module from the Python standard library.

Step 1: Import the threading module

The first step is to import the threading module, which contains the tools required to manage threads in Python.

1	import threading

Step 2: Define the target function

Next, you need to define the function that you want to execute concurrently using threads. This function will be the target of the threads you create. For example, let’s create a simple print_numbers function that prints numbers from 1 to 5 with a 1-second delay between each number.

import time

def print_numbers():

for i in range(1, 6):

print(i)

time.sleep(1)

Step 3: Create a thread

Now that you have defined the target function, you can create a thread object by calling the threading.Thread constructor. Pass the target function as the target argument.

1	number_thread = threading.Thread(target=print_numbers)

Step 4: Start the thread

Once you have created the thread object, you can start it by calling the start() method. This will begin the execution of the target function in a new thread.

1	number_thread.start()

Step 5: Manage multiple threads

You can create and start multiple threads to execute multiple instances of the target function concurrently. For example, let’s create and start two threads that both print numbers from 1 to 5.

# Create two threads

number_thread1 = threading.Thread(target=print_numbers)

number_thread2 = threading.Thread(target=print_numbers)

# Start both threads

number_thread1.start()

number_thread2.start()

In this example, two threads will be running concurrently, each printing numbers from 1 to 5.

Full example code

Here’s the full code from this tutorial:

import threading