need help about time.sleep, timer

Sinan Nalkaya

hello,
i need a function like that,
wait 5 seconds:
(during wait) do the function
but function waits for keyboard input so if you dont enter any it waits
forever.
i tried time.sleep() but when i used time.sleep in while, the function
in while never executed.
then i found something about Timer but couldnt realize any algorithm in
my mind.
i`ll use the function like remote controller. as you know in remote
controllers, tv waits you for second number input. if you dont press
any, executes the first number that you have entered.
thanks.

Nov 22 '05 #1

Peter Hansen

Sinan Nalkaya wrote:

i need a function like that,
wait 5 seconds:
(during wait) do the function
but function waits for keyboard input so if you dont enter any it waits
forever.

It's quite unclear whether the last part, above, is one of your
*requirements*, or a description of a problem you are having with your
current approach. Do you *want* it to wait forever if you don't enter
anthing?

-Peter

Nov 22 '05 #2

Peter Hansen

Sinan Nalkaya wrote:

i need a function like that,
wait 5 seconds:
(during wait) do the function
but function waits for keyboard input so if you dont enter any it waits
forever.

It's quite unclear whether the last part, above, is one of your
*requirements*, or a description of a problem you are having with your
current approach. Do you *want* it to wait forever if you don't enter
anthing?

-Peter

Nov 22 '05 #3

Sinan Nalkaya

Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:

On Fri, 18 Nov 2005 22:45:37 -0500, Peter Hansen <pe***@engcorp.com>
declaimed the following in comp.lang.python:

It's quite unclear whether the last part, above, is one of your
*requirements*, or a description of a problem you are having with your
current approach. Do you *want* it to wait forever if you don't enter
anthing?

As I understand it, he (?) wants to accumulate characters to be
passed to a certain function -- but the function is not to be invoked
until after a time period has expired; the time period resetting on each
character entered.

Something I'd do with threads, queues, and sleep...

PSEUDOCODE

thread1:
while not Shutdown:
ch = getChar()
q.put(ch)
thread2: #or main
while not Shutdown:
chars = []
while True:
sleep(max_interval)
if q.empty(): break #no input since start of sleep
while not q.empty(): #collect all input from sleep
chars.append(q.get())
inp = "".join(chars)
function(inp)

i appreciate your comments and ideas. Dennis told exactly what i tried
to say :), code seems to be fine but during sleep action i think the
above code does not execute

if q.empty(): break #no input since start of sleep
while not q.empty():
chars.append(q.get())

i need something, while sleeping, executes the function that waits for
input from keyboard.
i imagined something like that, i have a queu, it both stores the keys
that pressed and pressing times of these keys, then i`ll proccess these
times. here is scenario
input : 5
after 10 seconds later input 5 is being proccessed
return back to main function
input : 1
after 5 seconds , other input 5
after 5 more seconds , 15 is being proccessed
Thanks.

Nov 22 '05 #4

Sinan Nalkaya

Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:

On Fri, 18 Nov 2005 22:45:37 -0500, Peter Hansen <pe***@engcorp.com>
declaimed the following in comp.lang.python:

It's quite unclear whether the last part, above, is one of your
*requirements*, or a description of a problem you are having with your
current approach. Do you *want* it to wait forever if you don't enter
anthing?

As I understand it, he (?) wants to accumulate characters to be
passed to a certain function -- but the function is not to be invoked
until after a time period has expired; the time period resetting on each
character entered.

Something I'd do with threads, queues, and sleep...

PSEUDOCODE

thread1:
while not Shutdown:
ch = getChar()
q.put(ch)
thread2: #or main
while not Shutdown:
chars = []
while True:
sleep(max_interval)
if q.empty(): break #no input since start of sleep
while not q.empty(): #collect all input from sleep
chars.append(q.get())
inp = "".join(chars)
function(inp)

i appreciate your comments and ideas. Dennis told exactly what i tried
to say :), code seems to be fine but during sleep action i think the
above code does not execute

if q.empty(): break #no input since start of sleep
while not q.empty():
chars.append(q.get())

i need something, while sleeping, executes the function that waits for
input from keyboard.
i imagined something like that, i have a queu, it both stores the keys
that pressed and pressing times of these keys, then i`ll proccess these
times. here is scenario
input : 5
after 10 seconds later input 5 is being proccessed
return back to main function
input : 1
after 5 seconds , other input 5
after 5 more seconds , 15 is being proccessed
Thanks.

Nov 22 '05 #5

Sinan Nalkaya

Bengt Richter wrote:

On Mon, 21 Nov 2005 10:35:20 +0200, Sinan Nalkaya <er*************@gmail.com> wrote:

Dennis Lee Bieber wrote:

On Fri, 18 Nov 2005 22:45:37 -0500, Peter Hansen <pe***@engcorp.com>
declaimed the following in comp.lang.python:

It's quite unclear whether the last part, above, is one of your
*requirements*, or a description of a problem you are having with your
current approach. Do you *want* it to wait forever if you don't enter
anthing?

As I understand it, he (?) wants to accumulate characters to be
passed to a certain function -- but the function is not to be invoked
until after a time period has expired; the time period resetting on each
character entered.

Something I'd do with threads, queues, and sleep...

PSEUDOCODE

thread1:
while not Shutdown:
ch = getChar()
q.put(ch)
thread2: #or main
while not Shutdown:
chars = []
while True:
sleep(max_interval)
if q.empty(): break #no input since start of sleep
while not q.empty(): #collect all input from sleep
chars.append(q.get())
inp = "".join(chars)
function(inp)

i appreciate your comments and ideas. Dennis told exactly what i tried
to say :), code seems to be fine but during sleep action i think the
above code does not execute

if q.empty(): break #no input since start of sleep
while not q.empty():
chars.append(q.get())

i need something, while sleeping, executes the function that waits for
input from keyboard.
i imagined something like that, i have a queu, it both stores the keys
that pressed and pressing times of these keys, then i`ll proccess these
times. here is scenario
input : 5
after 10 seconds later input 5 is being proccessed
return back to main function
input : 1
after 5 seconds , other input 5
after 5 more seconds , 15 is being proccessed
Thanks.

If I understand, you really don't want to sleep, you want to wait a max time of 5 seconds
for a character. You can get that from a queue.get(True,5) hence, you could try the
following as a start (untested, and I don't have much experience with python threading,
so will wait for bug reports ;-)

Note that it uses getch for input, which doesn't echo. (Change to getche if you want echo)
You can run this from the command line with one arg: the number of seconds you want to
have the test continue. At the end of that time it will set the Shutdown event, and
thread2 should empty the queue and wait 5 seconds and then do its last function call and
see the shutdown event.

----< tqinp.py >-----------------------------------------------------------------------
# tqinp.py -- test queued input of unechoed character input until a 5-second delay
import threading
import Queue
import msvcrt
queue = Queue.Queue(10) # 2 is prob enough for this thing
Shutdown = threading.Event()

def getChar(): return msvcrt.getch() # blocks
def function(s): print 'function(%r)'%s

def thread1(q):
while not Shutdown.isSet():
ch = getChar()
q.put(ch)

def thread2(q): #or main
while not Shutdown.isSet():
chars = ''
try:
while True: chars += q.get(True, 5)
except Queue.Empty, e:
print 'No input for 5 seconds. Using %r'%chars
function(chars)

import time
def test(trial_time):
thr1 = threading.Thread(target=thread1, args=(queue,))
thr1.start()
thr2 = threading.Thread(target=thread2, args=(queue,))
thr2.start()
t0 = time.clock()
time.sleep(trial_time)
print 'Ending trial after %s seconds' % (time.clock()-t0)
Shutdown.set()

if __name__ == '__main__':
import sys
if not sys.argv[1:]: raise SystemExit,'Usage: python tqinp.py'
test(float(sys.argv[1]))
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ok, in the following I'll type 123 <pause 5> abc <pause to let it die>

[ 5:40] C:\pywk\clp\threadstuff>py24 tqinp.py 15
No input for 5 seconds. Using '123'
function('123')
No input for 5 seconds. Using 'abc'
function('abc')
Ending trial after 14.9948775627 seconds
No input for 5 seconds. Using ''
function('')

[ 5:41] C:\pywk\clp\threadstuff>

Except it didn't die until I hit another key to let thread1 loop and see its Shutdown test.
But this is alpha 0.01, so you can fix that various ways. Or maybe get the real requirements down ;-)
HTH
(once I get it posted -- news reads ok now but news server is not accepting posts.
I suspect they do system-hogging chores Sun night wee hours ;-/

Regards,
Bengt Richter

thanks for all replies especially via with code ones ;) steve`s codes
works perfectly except time part (ill look investigate it), i had to do
little edit because i`m unix user and dont have msvcrt but no problem.
also i am noticed that, i have to study on threading much as you said.
thanks again.

Nov 22 '05 #6