Warning: This is intended to work in *nix and OSX as requested but definitely will not work in Windows.
I've used this modification of an ActiveState recipe as a basis for the code below. It's an easy-to-use object that can read input with a timeout. It uses polling to collect characters one at a time and emulate the behavior of raw_input() / input().
Input with Timeout
Note: apparently the _getch_nix() method below doesn't work for OP but it does for me on OSX 10.9.5. You might have luck calling _getch_osx() instead although it seems to work in 32-bit python only since Carbon doesn't fully support 64-bit.
import sys
import time
class TimeoutInput(object):
def __init__(self, poll_period=0.05):
import sys, tty, termios # apparently timing of import is important if using an IDE
self.poll_period = poll_period
def _getch_nix(self):
import sys, tty, termios
from select import select
fd = sys.stdin.fileno()
old_settings = termios.tcgetattr(fd)
try:
tty.setraw(sys.stdin.fileno())
[i, o, e] = select([sys.stdin.fileno()], [], [], self.poll_period)
if i:
ch = sys.stdin.read(1)
else:
ch = ''
finally:
termios.tcsetattr(fd, termios.TCSADRAIN, old_settings)
return ch
def _getch_osx(self):
# from same discussion on the original ActiveState recipe:
# http://code.activestate.com/recipes/134892-getch-like-unbuffered-character-reading-from-stdin/#c2
import Carbon
if Carbon.Evt.EventAvail(0x0008)[0] == 0: # 0x0008 is the keyDownMask
return ''
else:
# The event contains the following info:
# (what,msg,when,where,mod)=Carbon.Evt.GetNextEvent(0x0008)[1]
#
# The message (msg) contains the ASCII char which is
# extracted with the 0x000000FF charCodeMask; this
# number is converted to an ASCII character with chr() and
# returned
(what,msg,when,where,mod)=Carbon.Evt.GetNextEvent(0x0008)[1]
return chr(msg & 0x000000FF)
def input(self, prompt=None, timeout=None,
extend_timeout_with_input=True, require_enter_to_confirm=True):
"""timeout: float seconds or None (blocking)"""
prompt = prompt or ''
sys.stdout.write(prompt) # this avoids a couple of problems with printing
sys.stdout.flush() # make sure prompt appears before we start waiting for input
input_chars = []
start_time = time.time()
received_enter = False
while (time.time() - start_time) < timeout:
# keep polling for characters
c = self._getch_osx() # self.poll_period determines spin speed
if c in ('\n', '\r'):
received_enter = True
break
elif c:
input_chars.append(c)
sys.stdout.write(c)
sys.stdout.flush()
if extend_timeout_with_input:
start_time = time.time()
sys.stdout.write('\n') # just for consistency with other "prints"
sys.stdout.flush()
captured_string = ''.join(input_chars)
if require_enter_to_confirm:
return_string = captured_string if received_enter else ''
else:
return_string = captured_string
return return_string
Test it
# this should work like raw_input() except it will time out
ti = TimeoutInput(poll_period=0.05)
s = ti.input(prompt='wait for timeout:', timeout=5.0,
extend_timeout_with_input=False, require_enter_to_confirm=False)
print(s)
Repeated Input
This implements your original intention as I understand it. I don't see any value to making recursive calls - I think what you want is just to get input repeatedly? Please correct me if that is wrong.
ti = TimeoutInput()
prompt = "Hello is it me you're looking for?"
timeout = 4.0
while True:
# some_function()
s = ti.input(prompt, timeout)
if s.lower() == 'q':
print "goodbye"
break
