Semaphores on Python

Question

I've started programming in Python a few weeks ago and was trying to use Semaphores to synchronize two simple threads, for learning purposes. Here is what I've got:

import threading
sem = threading.Semaphore()

def fun1():
    while True:
        sem.acquire()
        print(1)
        sem.release()

def fun2():
    while True:
        sem.acquire()
        print(2)
        sem.release()

t = threading.Thread(target = fun1)
t.start()
t2 = threading.Thread(target = fun2)
t2.start()

But it keeps printing just 1's. How can I intercale the prints?

Answer 1

It is working fine, its just that its printing too fast for you to see . Try putting a time.sleep() in both functions (a small amount) to sleep the thread for that much amount of time, to actually be able to see both 1 as well as 2.

Example -

import threading
import time
sem = threading.Semaphore()

def fun1():
    while True:
        sem.acquire()
        print(1)
        sem.release()
        time.sleep(0.25)

def fun2():
    while True:
        sem.acquire()
        print(2)
        sem.release()
        time.sleep(0.25)

t = threading.Thread(target = fun1)
t.start()
t2 = threading.Thread(target = fun2)
t2.start()