Using module 'subprocess' with timeout

Question

Here\'s the Python code to run an arbitrary command returning its stdout data, or raise an exception on non-zero exit codes:

proc = subprocess.P         


        

Answer 1

You can do this using select

import subprocess
from datetime import datetime
from select import select

def call_with_timeout(cmd, timeout):
    started = datetime.now()
    sp = subprocess.Popen(cmd, stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
    while True:
        p = select([sp.stdout], [], [], timeout)
        if p[0]:
            p[0][0].read()
        ret = sp.poll()
        if ret is not None:
            return ret
        if (datetime.now()-started).total_seconds() > timeout:
            sp.kill()
            return None