Ahh the penny has dropped at last. I am using the WingIDE and .not_empty is one of the properties it exposes with it's intellisense. As such its use is not documented. No problem.
Using the exception would more accurate - I can see that. In my simple case the queue is a one to one link, into and out of a single thread and so I can use the .empty() call with impunity. I can see that using queue's may be overkill in this instance but it has been good practice to get to know how they operate. Being new to python I am just getting used to syntax and conventions, your reply has clarrified the issue for me. Thank you for posting Steve. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
