Using module 'subprocess' with timeout

Question

Here\'s the Python code to run an arbitrary command returning its stdout data, or raise an exception on non-zero exit codes:

proc = subprocess.P         


        

Answer 1

timeout is now supported by call() and communicate() in the subprocess module (as of Python3.3):

import subprocess

subprocess.call("command", timeout=20, shell=True)

This will call the command and raise the exception

subprocess.TimeoutExpired

if the command doesn't finish after 20 seconds.

You can then handle the exception to continue your code, something like:

try:
    subprocess.call("command", timeout=20, shell=True)
except subprocess.TimeoutExpired:
    # insert code here

Hope this helps.