Non-Blocking raw_input() in python

Question

After digging around in SO for a while, I still haven\'t found a good answer to what I would hope is a fairly common need. Basically I need a main thread to do \"stuff\" unt

Answer 1

You created a thread but forget to start it:

listener = threading.Thread(target=kbdListener)
listener.start()

Answer 2

I found the accepted answer didn't work for me - it would still block at raw_input even in a separate thread. However, when I switched the threads around it worked right away.

import threading 

def mainWork():
  while 1:
    #whatever you wanted to do until an input is received

myThread = threading.Thread(target=mainWork)
myThread.start()

while 1:
  input = raw_input()
  #do stuff with input when it is received

Answer 3

In addition to MydKnight's answer (starting the thread), you need to change rawInput to raw_input, and it needs to be in some sort of while loop otherwise you'll only get one raw_input() logged.

Answer 4

If you actually want to keep the while loop going on forever, you will need to create a new thread and start it, each time the old one has finished.

I updated the example in the question to make that work:

import threading
import time

kbdInput = ''
playingID = ''
finished = True

def kbdListener():
    global kbdInput, finished
    kbdInput = raw_input("> ")
    print "maybe updating...the kbdInput variable is: {}".format(kbdInput)
    finished = True

while True:
    print "kbdInput: {}".format(kbdInput)
    print "playingID: {}".format(playingID)
    if playingID != kbdInput:
        print "Received new keyboard Input. Setting playing ID to keyboard input value"
        playingID = kbdInput
    else:
        print "No input from keyboard detected. Sleeping 2 seconds"
    if finished:
        finished = False
        listener = threading.Thread(target=kbdListener)
        listener.start()
    time.sleep(2)