Is it possible to kill the parent thread from within a child thread in python?

Question

I am using Python 3.5.2 on windows.

I would like to run a python script but guarantee that it will not take more than N seconds. If it does ta

Answer 1

If the parent thread is the root thread, you may want to try os._exit(0).

import os
import threading
import time

def may_take_a_long_time(name, wait_time):
    print("{} started...".format(name))
    time.sleep(wait_time)
    print("{} finished!.".format(name))

def kill():
    time.sleep(3)
    os._exit(0)

kill_thread = threading.Thread(target=kill)
kill_thread.start()

may_take_a_long_time("A", 2)
may_take_a_long_time("B", 2)
may_take_a_long_time("C", 2)
may_take_a_long_time("D", 2)

Answer 2

You can use _thread.interrupt_main (this module is called thread in Python 2.7):

import time, threading, _thread

def long_running():
    while True:
        print('Hello')

def stopper(sec):
    time.sleep(sec)
    print('Exiting...')
    _thread.interrupt_main()

threading.Thread(target = stopper, args = (2, )).start()

long_running()