iter(range) shared by threads exceeds max range value

[ptmcg]

Bug report

Bug description:

I was experimenting with atomic updates to containers and iterators across threads, and wrote this code. The GIL-enabled version does not have an issue, but the free-threaded version overruns the range iterator.
(Tested using CPython 3.14a05)

import sys

detect_gil = getattr(
 sys, '_is_gil_enabled', lambda: "no GIL detection available"
)
print(f"sys._is_gil_enabled() = {detect_gil()}")

import itertools
from threading import Thread, Barrier
from time import perf_counter


target_total = 800_000
num_workers = 8

# shared data - will access to these be thread-safe?
worker_id = itertools.count(1)
counter = iter(range(target_total))

# free-threaded code is _much_ faster with pre-allocated lists (over list.append or deque.append)
ints = [-1] * target_total
result_buffer = [None] * target_total

barrier = Barrier(num_workers)

def worker():
 this_thread = next(worker_id)

 # wait for all threads to have started before proceeding
 barrier.wait()

 # initialize buffer_index in case all the other thread exhaust counter
 # before this thread gets a chance to run
 buffer_index = 0

 # all threads share a common iterator
 for buffer_index in counter:

 ### THIS IS THE BAD PART - I SHOULDN"T HAVE TO DO THIS CHECK, SINCE counter IS AN 
 ### ITERATOR OVER range(target_total)
 if buffer_index >= target_total:
 # this shouldn't happen if counter is an iterator on a range
 break

 value = buffer_index + 1

 # increment the shared counter and add the result to the shared set WITHOUT locking
 ints[buffer_index] = value
 # ints.append(value)

 result_buffer[buffer_index] = (this_thread, value)
 # result_buffer.append((this_thread, value))

 if buffer_index >= target_total:
 ### THIS SHOULD NEVER HAPPEN, BUT IN THE OUPTUT YOU'LL SEE THAT IT DOES
 ### IN THE FREE-THREADED CASE
 print(f"iterator exceeded range max: {buffer_index=}, {len(ints)=} (shouldn't happen)")

threads = [Thread(target=worker) for _ in range(num_workers)]

for t in threads[:-1]:
 t.start()
input("Press Enter to start the threads")

start = perf_counter()

# starting the n'th thread releases the barrier
threads[-1].start()

for t in threads:
 t.join()
end = perf_counter()

print(">>>", end-start)

# see if ints are sorted - they don't have to be, if they are it just shows that
# the threads were able to safely increment the shared counter and append to the
# shared list
ints_are_sorted = all(
 a == b for a, b in zip(ints, range(1, target_total + 1))
)

# verify that no numbers are missing or duplicated (check expected sum of values 1-target_total)
assert sum(ints) == target_total * (target_total + 1) // 2

# Is the shared list sorted? If not, the counter increment
# and list append operations together are not thread-safe
# (as expected).
# (though passing the assert does imply thread-safety
# of each of the operations individually).
print("sorted?", ints_are_sorted)

# see how evenly the work was distributed across the thread
# workers
from collections import Counter
tally = Counter(i[0] for i in result_buffer)
for thread_id, count in tally.most_common():
 print(f"{thread_id:2d} {count:16,d}")
print(f"{sum(tally.values()):,}")

With GIL enabled:

sys._is_gil_enabled() = True
Press Enter to start the threads
>>> 0.5602053000038723
sorted? True
 1 147,616
 4 147,199
 7 108,055
 5 100,552
 6 99,720
 8 94,804
 2 72,038
 3 30,016
800,000

With free-threaded 3.14:

sys._is_gil_enabled() = False
Press Enter to start the threads
(pyparsing_3.13) PS C:\Users\ptmcg\dev\pyparsing\gh\pyparsing> py -3.14t "C:\Users\ptmcg\dev\pyparsing\gh\pyparsing\tests\nogil_multithreading_bug_report.py"
sys._is_gil_enabled() = False
Press Enter to start the threads
iterator exceeded range max: buffer_index=800003, len(ints)=800000 (shouldn't happen)iterator exceeded range max: buffer_index=800002, len(ints)=800000 (shouldn't happen)
iterator exceeded range max: buffer_index=800004, len(ints)=800000 (shouldn't happen)
iterator exceeded range max: buffer_index=800006, len(ints)=800000 (shouldn't happen)iterator exceeded range max: buffer_index=800007, len(ints)=800000 (shouldn't happen)


iterator exceeded range max: buffer_index=800000, len(ints)=800000 (shouldn't happen)

iterator exceeded range max: buffer_index=800005, len(ints)=800000 (shouldn't happen)iterator exceeded range max: buffer_index=800001, len(ints)=800000 (shouldn't happen)
>>> 3.4842117999942275
sorted? True
 5 138,725
 8 100,496
 3 95,411
 4 94,917
 6 94,825
 2 92,904
 1 92,339
 7 90,383
800,000

CPython versions tested on:

3.14

Operating systems tested on:

Windows

[colesbury]

Is this the same as the following issue?

• Race in concurrent iteration over range iterators #129068

From https://docs.python.org/3/howto/free-threading-python.html#iterators:

Sharing the same iterator object between multiple threads is generally not safe

I don't think we have plans to change that in 3.14.

[ptmcg]

It doesn't seem to be a thread safety issue per se - the issue I'm surfacing is that the range max value is not respected.

Calling next() on iterators returned from itertools.count() so far seems to be an atomic function that threads don't trip over, even in free-threaded code. The only real thread-safety issue I've found is when I intentionally introduce unsafe design requiring maintaining consistency between two state values

Thanks for the link to the HOW_TO, I'll study that further.

[ptmcg]

I've edited my code snippet to make it a little clearer where I'm having an issue.

[Yhg1s]

It doesn't seem to be a thread safety issue per se - the issue I'm surfacing is that the range max value is not respected.

Yes, that's a thread safety issue. You're sharing an object between threads, but that object isn't implemented in a way that allows it to be safely shared between threads. The concurrent calls to its __next__() are not thread-safe.

[colesbury]

Thanks @ptmcg for the bug report and sample code. Let's track this in the existing issue #129068.