Python equivalent of Golang’s select on channels

Here’s a pretty direct translation, but the “choosing which if multiple are ready” part works differently – it’s just taking what came in first. Also this is like running your code with gomaxprocs(1).

import threading
import Queue

def main():
    c1 = Queue.Queue(maxsize=0)
    c2 = Queue.Queue(maxsize=0)
    quit = Queue.Queue(maxsize=0)

    def func1():
        for i in range(10):
            c1.put(i)
        quit.put(0)

    threading.Thread(target=func1).start()

    def func2():
        for i in range(2):
            c2.put(i)

    threading.Thread(target=func2).start()

    combined = Queue.Queue(maxsize=0)

    def listen_and_forward(queue):
        while True:
            combined.put((queue, queue.get()))

    t = threading.Thread(target=listen_and_forward, args=(c1,))
    t.daemon = True
    t.start()
    t = threading.Thread(target=listen_and_forward, args=(c2,))
    t.daemon = True
    t.start()
    t = threading.Thread(target=listen_and_forward, args=(quit,))
    t.daemon = True
    t.start()

    while True:
        which, message = combined.get()
        if which is c1:
            print 'Received value from c1'
        elif which is c2:
            print 'Received value from c2'
        elif which is quit:
            print 'Received value from quit'
            return
main()

The basic change is simulating the select with threads that combine messages. If you were going to use this pattern much, you might write some select code:

import threading
import Queue

def select(*queues):
    combined = Queue.Queue(maxsize=0)
    def listen_and_forward(queue):
        while True:
            combined.put((queue, queue.get()))
    for queue in queues:
        t = threading.Thread(target=listen_and_forward, args=(queue,))
        t.daemon = True
        t.start()
    while True:
        yield combined.get()

def main():

    c1 = Queue.Queue(maxsize=0)
    c2 = Queue.Queue(maxsize=0)
    quit = Queue.Queue(maxsize=0)

    def func1():
        for i in range(10):
            c1.put(i)
        quit.put(0)

    threading.Thread(target=func1).start()

    def func2():
        for i in range(2):
            c2.put(i)

    threading.Thread(target=func2).start()

    for which, msg in select(c1, c2, quit):
        if which is c1:
            print 'Received value from c1'
        elif which is c2:
            print 'Received value from c2'
        elif which is quit:
            print 'Received value from quit'
            return
main()

But…

Note that this select isn’t quite the go one, though it doesn’t matter for your program – a goroutine could send a result on a channel that would be queued up in the select and lost if we didn’t always iterate over the select to completion!