Accessing objects that aren't bound to a variable in Python

Question

I've been learning to program with Python on and off for a while now, and my current project is a download manager with a GUI written in wxPython. I have DownloadThreads, inheriting from threading.Thread, that I instantiate a varying amount of:

for i in xrange(self.thread_count):
    DownloadThread(self.queue, self.status, self.save_dir, i).start()

Because the number of threads I'm going to be creating isn't fixed, I can't assign the DownloadThread objects to variables, so I can't see how to access their methods, such as x.isAlive(). I thought about dynamically creating variables, but something about this seems like a really bad idea. How would I go about accessing these "anonymous" objects (terminology?), or am I going about this the wrong way? Thanks for reading, apologies if this is really simple / obvious.

To access an object you have to bind them, it's the same in every language I know. Anonymous things are for onetime use and throw away. — Kien Truong
– Kien Truong, Commented Apr 4, 2012 at 10:52

kojiro · Accepted Answer · 2012-04-04 10:55:58Z

3

The simplest thing would be to keep all your threads in a list:

self.threads = []
for i in xrange(self.thread_count):
    self.threads.append(DownloadThread(self.queue, self.status, self.save_dir, i))
    self.threads[i].start()

edited Apr 4, 2012 at 10:55

answered Apr 4, 2012 at 10:49

kojiro

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5 Comments

Gareth Latty Over a year ago

I don't really feel the list comprehension makes this clearer.

muskrat Over a year ago

Thanks very much, this is the sort of thing I was after.

kojiro Over a year ago

@Lattyware ok, used regular iteration syntax

Karl Knechtel Over a year ago

@Lattyware I would probably factor the 'create a thread and start it' part into a separate function, and then use a list comprehension that calls the helper.

Gareth Latty Over a year ago

I generally see list comps as the clearest way to construct a list, but in this case, it's more an operation, with a list being made as a side-effect. It may just be me, but I prefer to keep this kind of thing in a regular loop - generally because I find it clearer and so I can add more code when needed. Of course, having it in a function in a list comp also allows for that.

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