How to set time limit on raw_input

Question

in python, is there a way to, while waiting for a user input, count time so that after, say 30 seconds, the raw_input() function is automatically skipped?

Answer 1

I found a solution to this problem in a blog post. Here's the code from that blog post:

import signal

class AlarmException(Exception):
    pass

def alarmHandler(signum, frame):
    raise AlarmException

def nonBlockingRawInput(prompt='', timeout=20):
    signal.signal(signal.SIGALRM, alarmHandler)
    signal.alarm(timeout)
    try:
        text = raw_input(prompt)
        signal.alarm(0)
        return text
    except AlarmException:
        print '\nPrompt timeout. Continuing...'
    signal.signal(signal.SIGALRM, signal.SIG_IGN)
    return ''

Please note: this code will only work on *nix OSs.