how to start a seperate thread for every item in a list

[ThiefOfTime]

It is because you are creating a new list items in the process method and iterate over all of that items. Change the method to:

def process(item):
    print "Sleeping 2 sec from thread %s \n" % item
     
    time.sleep(1)
    #i=len(items)
    print "Finished sleeping from thread %s \n" % item
    try:
        base_path = '/ai2/data/dev/admin/inf/*{}*'
        search_path =  base_path.format(item)
        for f in glob.glob(search_path):
            print ("The directory path is:")
            print f
    except:
        print('error with pattern')