"Do this, and come back when you're done"

[Kamus of Kadizhar]

I have the following function which generates MD5 hashes for files on a 
local and remote server.  The remote server has a little applet that 
runs from inetd and generates an MD5 hash given the file name.

The problem is that it takes 2+ minutes to generate the MD5 hash, so 
this function takes about 5 minutes every time it is called.  Since the 
first MD5 hash is generated on a remote machine, the local machine does 
nothing but wait for half that time.

Is there any way to rewrite each half of the function to run in the 
background, so to speak, and then have a master process that waits on 
the results?  This would cut execution time in half more or less.

# checkMD5
def checkMD5(fileName, localDir):
    # get remote hash
    Socket = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET,socket.SOCK_STREAM)
    Socket.connect((MD5server,888))
    #throw away ID string
    Socket.recv(256)
    Socket.send(fileName+'\n')
    remoteMD5hash = Socket.recv(256)

    # get local hash
    try:
       file=open(makeMovieName(localDir,fileName), 'r')
    except IOError:
       localMD5hash = '0'
    else:
       hasher = md5.new()
       while True:
          chunk = file.read(1024)
          if not chunk:
             break
          hasher.update(chunk)
       localMD5hash = hasher.hexdigest()
    if Debug: print "local:",localMD5hash, "remote:",remoteMD5hash
    return localMD5hash.strip() == remoteMD5hash.strip()

-Kamus

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