joates-spring-2021/lab-12

Lab-12 - Multithreading

You've suffered enough this semester, so now it's time for something a little easier. This lab is intended to be a simple introduction to multithreading. The topic of multithreading has much more to it than we will get into in this class, but just doing this lab will give you a basic idea of what a thread is, and how the operating system handles multiple threads within a single application.

Overview

Write a Python program to demonstrate multithreading. Your code shall first create a file for writing called "synch.txt" (autograder will be looking for this file). Then it will create two separate threads, Thread-A and Thread-B (call them whatever you want). Both threads will open synch.txt and write to it. Thread-A will write the numbers 1 - 26 twenty times in nested for loops then exit. In other words, print 1 - 26 over and over again on separate lines for at least 20 times. Thread-B will write the letters A - Z twenty times in nested for loops then exit. We will not learn process synchronization in this class, but if you feel like it, you may use a mutex lock to control synchronization between the two threads. When the program is complete, the synch.txt file "should" look like this:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26
..... 20x

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
... 20x

However, you will notice that if you do not use a mutex lock, your file might look a little different. That's ok. You won't be graded on what your output looks like. You will only be graded on your use of two threads to write to a file named synch.txt.