weakrefs, threads,, and object ids

[Jeremy]

Hello,

I'm using weakrefs in a small multi-threaded application.  I have been
using object IDs as dictionary keys with weakrefs to execute removal
code, and was glad to find out that this is in fact recommended
practice (http://docs.python.org/library/weakref.html)

> This simple example shows how an application can use objects IDs to retrieve
> objects that it has seen before. The IDs of the objects can then be used in other
> data structures without forcing the objects to remain alive, but the objects can
> still be retrieved by ID if they do.

After reading this, I realized it made no explicit mention of thread
safety in this section, whereas other sections made a note of correct
practice with threads.  The docs for the id() function specify

> Return the identity of an object.  This is guaranteed to be unique among
> simultaneously existing objects.  (Hint: it's the object's memory address.)

While guaranteed unique for simultaneously existing objects, how often
will an object assume an ID previously held by former object?  Given
that the ID is a memory address in Python's heap, I assume the answer
is either not often, or very often.

Specifically, I'm wondering if the case can occur that the callback
for a weakref is executed after another object has been allocated with
the same object identifier as a previous object.  If such an object is
inserted into a module-level dictionary, could it over-write a
previous entry with the same identifier and then get deleted whenever
the weakref callback happens to fire?



On a related note, what is a recommended way to obtain a weak
reference to a thread?