Use case

Set a timeout (seconds) upon expiration of which an exception is raised:

from timeout import timeout

…as a context manager:

with timeout(0.5):
    ... work ...

…or decorating a function:

@timeout(0.5)
def work():
    ...

The exception may be configured, either by passing an exception instance, or by specifying an overriding exception class and/or value(s):

with timeout(0.5, RuntimeError("Work took too long")):
    ... work ...

with timeout(0.5, RuntimeError, "Work took too long"):
    ... work ...

with timeout(0.5, exc=RuntimeError):
    ... work ...

with timeout(0.5, value="Work took too long"):
    ... work ...

with timeout(0.5, value=(2, "Took too long", 'work.py')):
    ... work ...

The timeout exception defaults to TimeoutError("Operation timed out").

Note: timeout is implemented via signal, and as such may not be applied outside of a process’s main thread.

Installation

signalled-timeout is a Python distribution, which may be installed via easy_install or pip, e.g.:

pip install signalled-timeout

…or, from source:

python setup.py install

Testing

To test the distribution on your system, execute its test command:

python setup.py test