Thread Safety in Python's dictionary

Question

I have a class which holds a dictionary

class OrderBook:
    orders = {'Restaurant1': None,
              'Restaurant2': None,
              'Restaurant3': None,
              'Restaurant4': None}

    @staticmethod
    def addOrder(restaurant_name, orders):
        OrderBook.orders[restaurant_name] = orders

And I am running 4 threads (one for each restaurant) that call the method OrderBook.addOrder. Here is the function ran by each thread:

def addOrders(restaurant_name):

    #creates orders
    ...

    OrderBook.addOrder(restaurant_name, orders)

Is this safe, or do I have to use a lock before calling addOrder?

Answer 1

Python's built-in structures are thread-safe for single operations, but it can sometimes be hard to see where a statement really becomes multiple operations.

Your code should be safe. Keep in mind: a lock here will add almost no overhead, and will give you peace of mind.

http://effbot.org/pyfaq/what-kinds-of-global-value-mutation-are-thread-safe.htm has more details.