An atomic, thread-safe incrementing counter for Python

atomic_counter.py

"""An atomic, thread-safe incrementing counter."""

import threading


class AtomicCounter:
    """An atomic, thread-safe incrementing counter.

    >>> counter = AtomicCounter()
    >>> counter.increment()
    1
    >>> counter.increment(4)
    5

    >>> counter = AtomicCounter(42.5)
    >>> counter.value
    42.5
    >>> counter.increment(0.5)
    43.0

    >>> counter = AtomicCounter()
    >>> def incrementor():
    ...     for i in range(100000):
    ...         counter.increment()
    >>> threads = []
    >>> for i in range(4):
    ...     thread = threading.Thread(target=incrementor)
    ...     thread.start()
    ...     threads.append(thread)
    >>> for thread in threads:
    ...     thread.join()
    >>> counter.value
    400000
    """
    def __init__(self, initial=0):
        """Initialize a new atomic counter to given initial value (default 0)."""
        self.value = initial
        self._lock = threading.Lock()

    def increment(self, num=1):
        """Atomically increment the counter by num (default 1) and return the
        new value.
        """
        with self._lock:
            self.value += num
            return self.value


if __name__ == '__main__':
    import doctest
    doctest.testmod()

Thank you!