Dumping a multiprocessing.Queue into a list

Try this:

import Queue
import time

def dump_queue(queue):
    """
    Empties all pending items in a queue and returns them in a list.
    """
    result = []

    for i in iter(queue.get, 'STOP'):
        result.append(i)
    time.sleep(.1)
    return result

import multiprocessing
q = multiprocessing.Queue()
for i in range(100):
    q.put([range(200) for j in range(100)])
q.put('STOP')
l=dump_queue(q)
print len(l)

Multiprocessing queues have an internal buffer which has a feeder thread which pulls work off a buffer and flushes it to the pipe. If not all of the objects have been flushed, I could see a case where Empty is raised prematurely. Using a sentinel to indicate the end of the queue is safe (and reliable). Also, using the iter(get, sentinel) idiom is just better than relying on Empty.

I don’t like that it could raise empty due to flushing timing (I added the time.sleep(.1) to allow a context switch to the feeder thread, you may not need it, it works without it – it’s a habit to release the GIL).