What I would like to be able to do is ask a user a question using input. For example:
print(\'some scenario\')
prompt = input(\"You have 10 seconds to choose the correct answer...\\n\")
and then if the time elapses print something like
print(\'Sorry, times up.\')
Any help pointing me in the right direction would be greatly appreciated.
Interesting problem, this seems to work:
import time
from threading import Thread
answer = None
def check():
time.sleep(2)
if answer != None:
return
print \"Too Slow\"
Thread(target = check).start()
answer = raw_input(\"Input something: \")
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 for Python 3) on Windows (not tested):
import msvcrt
import time
class TimeoutExpired(Exception):
pass
def input_with_timeout(prompt, timeout, timer=time.monotonic):
sys.stdout.write(prompt)
sys.stdout.flush()
endtime = timer() + timeout
result = []
while timer() < endtime:
if msvcrt.kbhit():
result.append(msvcrt.getwche()) #XXX can it block on multibyte characters?
if result[-1] == \'\\n\': #XXX check what Windows returns here
return \'\'.join(result[:-1])
time.sleep(0.04) # just to yield to other processes/threads
raise TimeoutExpired
Usage:
try:
answer = input_with_timeout(prompt, 10)
except TimeoutExpired:
print(\'Sorry, times up\')
else:
print(\'Got %r\' % answer)
On Unix you could try:
import select
import sys
def input_with_timeout(prompt, timeout):
sys.stdout.write(prompt)
sys.stdout.flush()
ready, _, _ = select.select([sys.stdin], [],[], timeout)
if ready:
return sys.stdin.readline().rstrip(\'\\n\') # expect stdin to be line-buffered
raise TimeoutExpired
Or:
import signal
def alarm_handler(signum, frame):
raise TimeoutExpired
def input_with_timeout(prompt, timeout):
# set signal handler
signal.signal(signal.SIGALRM, alarm_handler)
signal.alarm(timeout) # produce SIGALRM in `timeout` seconds
try:
return input(prompt)
finally:
signal.alarm(0) # cancel alarm