What is the difference between a thread and a process in Python?

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Answer:

In Python, a process is an instance of a running program, while a thread is a separate flow of execution within a process.

A process has its own memory space and system resources, and is completely independent from other processes. Each process runs in its own environment and has its own instance of the Python interpreter. This means that multiple processes can run simultaneously and are isolated from each other, which is useful for running multiple tasks that need to run concurrently but don't need to share data.

A thread, on the other hand, runs within a single process and shares memory space and system resources with other threads within the same process. This means that threads can communicate with each other and share data more easily than processes, which is useful for tasks that need to run concurrently and need to share data.

In Python, you can create a new process using the multiprocessing module, while you can create a new thread using the threading module, as described in my previous answer.

When choosing between using threads or processes in Python, you need to consider the requirements of your application. If you have tasks that don't need to share data and can run completely independently, you might choose to use multiple processes. If you have tasks that need to share data and run concurrently, you might choose to use threads. However, it's worth noting that Python threads have some limitations, such as the Global Interpreter Lock (GIL), which can limit the performance benefits of using threads for certain types of parallelism.


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