Stop code after time period [duplicate]

Question

I would like to call foo(n) but stop it if it runs for more than 10 seconds. What's a good way to do this?

I can see that I could in theory modify foo itself to periodically check how long it has been running for but I would prefer not to do that.

Answer 1

Here you go:

import multiprocessing import time  # Your foo function def foo(n):     for i in range(10000 * n):         print "Tick"         time.sleep(1)  if __name__ == '__main__':     # Start foo as a process     p = multiprocessing.Process(target=foo, name="Foo", args=(10,))     p.start()      # Wait 10 seconds for foo     time.sleep(10)      # Terminate foo     p.terminate()      # Cleanup     p.join() 

This will wait 10 seconds for foo and then kill it.

Update

Terminate the process only if it is running.

# If thread is active if p.is_alive():     print "foo is running... let's kill it..."      # Terminate foo     p.terminate() 

Update 2 : Recommended

Use join with timeout. If foo finishes before timeout, then main can continue.

# Wait a maximum of 10 seconds for foo # Usage: join([timeout in seconds]) p.join(10)  # If thread is active if p.is_alive():     print "foo is running... let's kill it..."      # Terminate foo     p.terminate()     p.join()