[Tutor] how to run function only for a pre-defined time

Alan Gauld alan.gauld at btinternet.com
Sat Oct 27 14:08:26 CEST 2007


"Vinu Vikram" <vvinuv at gmail.com> wrote

> Could anybody try to tell me whether it is possible to run a 
> function only
> for a particular time period. In my python script I call some third 
> party
> function which some time won't give results. I would like to write 
> the
> script in such a way that, it will wait for the result from this 
> function
> for some time, say 10 seconds, and if it fails to get any results 
> within
> that time (10 seconds), the script should skip that function and 
> stop the
> program.
>

I think you will need to use threading to launch your function in a
separate thread. If the thread dopesn't end in time you can proceed
in the main thread to kill the thread and exit the program.

Read about Python threading here:

http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/~matloff/Python/PyThreads.pdf

-- 
Alan Gauld
Author of the Learn to Program web site
http://www.freenetpages.co.uk/hp/alan.gauld 




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