killing thread after timeout

[Peter Hansen]

Jacek Popławski wrote:
> I am going to write python script which will read python command from 
> socket, run it and return some values back to socket.

(Sounds like a huge security risk, unless you have tight control over 
who can connect to that socket.)

> My problem is, that I need some timeout. I need to say for example:
> 
> os.system("someapplication.exe")
> 
> and kill it, if it waits longer than let's say 100 seconds
> 
> I want to call command on separate thread, then after given timeout - 
> kill thread, but I realized (after reading Usenet archive) that there is 
> no way to kill a thread in Python.

The issue isn't killing a thread in Python, it's killing the *new 
process* which that thread has started.  To do that you have to rely on 
OS-specific (i.e. non-portable) techniques.  Googling for "python kill 
process" would probably get you off to a good start.

-Peter