[ARROW-13317] [Python] Improve documentation on what 'use_threads' does in 'read_feather'

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Resolved
• Priority: Trivial
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 4.0.1
• Fix Version/s: 6.0.0
• Component/s: Python
• Labels: documentation good-first-issue pull-request-available
• External issue URL: https://github.com/apache/arrow/issues/28993
• Assignee: Alenka Frim
• Reporter: Arun Joseph
• Created: 12/Jul/21 20:20
• Updated: 11/Jan/23 08:32
• Resolved: 20/Oct/21 13:32

Description

The current documentation for read_feather states the following:

use_threads (bool, default True) – Whether to parallelize reading using multiple threads.

if the underlying file uses compression, then multiple threads can still be spawned. The verbiage of the use_threads is ambiguous on whether the restriction on multiple threads is only for the conversion from pyarrow to the pandas dataframe vs the reading/decompression of the file itself which might spawn additional threads.

set_cpu_count might be good to mention as a way to actually limit threads spawned

Issue Links

• relates to: ARROW-14470 [Python] Expose the use_threads option in Feather read functions
• links to: GitHub Pull Request #11475