Keyboard input with timeout?

Using a select call is shorter, and should be much more portable

import sys, selectprint "You have ten seconds to answer!"i, o, e = select.select( [sys.stdin], [], [], 10 )if (i):  print "You said", sys.stdin.readline().strip()else:  print "You said nothing!"

The example you have linked to is wrong and the exception is actually occuring when calling alarm handler instead of when read blocks. Better try this:

import signalTIMEOUT = 5 # number of seconds your want for timeoutdef interrupted(signum, frame):    "called when read times out"    print 'interrupted!'signal.signal(signal.SIGALRM, interrupted)def input():    try:            print 'You have 5 seconds to type in your stuff...'            foo = raw_input()            return foo    except:            # timeout            return# set alarmsignal.alarm(TIMEOUT)s = input()# disable the alarm after successsignal.alarm(0)print 'You typed', s

Not a Python solution, but...

I ran in to this problem with a script running under CentOS (Linux), and what worked for my situation was just running the Bash "read -t" command in a subprocess. Brutal disgusting hack, I know, but I feel guilty enough about how well it worked that I wanted to share it with everyone here.

import subprocesssubprocess.call('read -t 30', shell=True)

All I needed was something that waited for 30 seconds unless the ENTER key was pressed. This worked great.