gh-142518: Document thread-safety guarantees of bytearray objects

Author: lysnikolaou

Doc/library/stdtypes.rst

@@ -3472,6 +3472,11 @@ The representation of bytearray objects uses the bytes literal format
 ``bytearray([46, 46, 46])``.  You can always convert a bytearray object into
 a list of integers using ``list(b)``.
 
+.. seealso::
+
+   For detailed information on thread-safety guarantees for :class:`bytearray`
+   objects, see :ref:`thread-safety-bytearray`.
+
 
 .. _bytes-methods:
 

Doc/library/threadsafety.rst

@@ -260,3 +260,104 @@ thread, iterate over a copy:
 
 Consider external synchronization when sharing :class:`dict` instances
 across threads.
+
+
+.. _thread-safety-bytearray:
+
+Thread safety for bytearray objects
+===================================
+
+   The :func:`len` function is lock-free and :term:`atomic <atomic operation>`.
+
+   Concatenation and comparisons use the buffer protocol, which prevents
+   resizing but does not hold the per-object lock. These operations may
+   observe intermediate states from concurrent modifications:
+
+   .. code-block::
+      :class: maybe
+
+      ba + other    # may observe concurrent writes
+      ba == other   # may observe concurrent writes
+      ba < other    # may observe concurrent writes
+
+   All other operations from here on hold the per-object lock.
+
+   Reading a single element or slice is safe to call from multiple threads:
+
+   .. code-block::
+      :class: good
+
+      ba[i]        # bytearray.__getitem__
+      ba[i:j]      # slice
+
+   The following operations are safe to call from multiple threads and will
+   not corrupt the bytearray:
+
+   .. code-block::
+      :class: good
+
+      ba[i] = x         # write single byte
+      ba[i:j] = values  # write slice
+      ba.append(x)      # append single byte
+      ba.extend(other)  # extend with iterable
+      ba.insert(i, x)   # insert single byte
+      ba.pop()          # remove and return last byte
+      ba.pop(i)         # remove and return byte at index
+      ba.remove(x)      # remove first occurrence
+      ba.reverse()      # reverse in place
+      ba.clear()        # remove all bytes
+
+   Slice assignment locks both objects when *values* is a :class:`bytearray`:
+
+   .. code-block::
+      :class: good
+
+      ba[i:j] = other_bytearray  # both locked
+
+   The following operations return new objects and hold the per-object lock
+   for the duration:
+
+   .. code-block::
+      :class: good
+
+      ba.copy()     # returns a shallow copy
+      ba * n        # repeat into new bytearray
+
+   The membership test holds the lock for its duration:
+
+   .. code-block::
+      :class: good
+
+      x in ba       # bytearray.__contains__
+
+   All other bytearray methods (such as :meth:`~bytearray.find`,
+   :meth:`~bytearray.replace`, :meth:`~bytearray.split`,
+   :meth:`~bytearray.decode`, etc.) hold the per-object lock for their
+   duration.
+
+   Operations that involve multiple accesses, as well as iteration, are never
+   atomic:
+
+   .. code-block::
+      :class: bad
+
+      # NOT atomic: check-then-act
+      if x in ba:
+          ba.remove(x)
+
+      # NOT thread-safe: iteration while modifying
+      for byte in ba:
+          process(byte)  # another thread may modify ba
+
+   To safely iterate over a bytearray that may be modified by another
+   thread, iterate over a copy:
+
+   .. code-block::
+      :class: good
+
+      # Make a copy to iterate safely
+      for byte in ba.copy():
+          process(byte)
+
+   Consider external synchronization when sharing :class:`bytearray` instances
+   across threads.  See :ref:`freethreading-python-howto` for more information.