Python multithreading using queue
<p>I was reading a article on Python multi threading using Queues and have a basic question.</p>

<p>Based on the print stmt, 5 threads are started as expected. So, how does the queue works?</p>

<p>1.The thread is started initially and when the queue is populated with a item does it gets restarted and starts processing that item?
2.If we use the queue system and threads process each item by item in the queue, how there is a improvement in performance..Is it not similar to serial processing ie; 1 by 1.</p>

<pre><code>import Queue
import threading
import urllib2
import datetime
import time

hosts = ["http://yahoo.com", "http://google.com", "http://amazon.com",
"http://ibm.com", "http://apple.com"]

queue = Queue.Queue()

class ThreadUrl(threading.Thread):

  def __init__(self, queue):
    threading.Thread.__init__(self)
    print 'threads are created'
    self.queue = queue

  def run(self):
    while True:
      #grabs host from queue
      print 'thread startting to run'
      now = datetime.datetime.now()

      host = self.queue.get()

      #grabs urls of hosts and prints first 1024 bytes of page
      url = urllib2.urlopen(host)
      print 'host=%s ,threadname=%s' % (host,self.getName())
      print url.read(20)

      #signals to queue job is done
      self.queue.task_done()

start = time.time()
if __name__ == '__main__':

  #spawn a pool of threads, and pass them queue instance 
    print 'program start'
    for i in range(5):

        t = ThreadUrl(queue)
        t.setDaemon(True)
        t.start()

 #populate queue with data   
    for host in hosts:
        queue.put(host)

 #wait on the queue until everything has been processed     
    queue.join()


    print "Elapsed Time: %s" % (time.time() - start)
</code></pre>
