Fork+Timeout

[Josiah Carlson]

> do someone new how I can do the following?
> 
> I call a method which reads from a socket. So ... this method could hang
> forever and so my call hangs too ...
> 
> So ... I can not change the behavior of this Method, so I have to change my
> call.
> 
> I though by forking the call to this function and set a timeout to this
> call, so my program won't hang forever.
> 
> But I don't know how I should do this and if this is the correct/best way to
> do this.

Use non-blocking sockets.  Check out the asyncore module, or if you are 
feeling ambitious, check out Twisted.

  - Josiah