The best way is to start the timer thread once. Inside your timer thread you’d code the following class MyThread(Thread): def __init__(self, event): Thread.__init__(self) self.stopped = event def run(self): while not self.stopped.wait(0.5): print(“my thread”) # call a function In the code that started the timer, you can then set the stopped event to stop the … Read more
If it is acceptable to block the main thread when user haven’t provided an answer: from threading import Timer timeout = 10 t = Timer(timeout, print, [‘Sorry, times up’]) t.start() prompt = “You have %d seconds to choose the correct answer…\n” % timeout answer = input(prompt) t.cancel() Otherwise, you could use @Alex Martelli’s answer (modified … Read more
You may use the signal package if you are running on UNIX: In [1]: import signal # Register an handler for the timeout In [2]: def handler(signum, frame): …: print(“Forever is over!”) …: raise Exception(“end of time”) …: # This function *may* run for an indetermined time… In [3]: def loop_forever(): …: import time …: … Read more
Since this question was asked in 2010, there has been real simplification in how to do simple multithreading with Python with map and pool. The code below comes from an article/blog post that you should definitely check out (no affiliation) – Parallelism in one line: A Better Model for Day to Day Threading Tasks. I’ll … Read more