Cross-platform time out decorator

[Steve Holden]

Joel wrote:
> On Sep 27, 4:36 pm, Hrvoje Niksic <hnik... at xemacs.org> wrote:
>> Joel <joel.schae... at gmail.com> writes:
>>> I found the solution :
>>> http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/440569
>>> describes a solution based on threads. I tested it and it works
>>> perfectly.
>> Note that, unlike the original alarm code, it doesn't really interrupt
>> the timed-out method, it just returns the control back to the caller,
>> using an exception to mark that a timeout occurred.  The "timed out"
>> code is still merrily running in the background.  I don't know if it's
>> a problem in your case, but it's an important drawback.
> 
> There should be a method to stop the thread though? I've never
> programmed thread stuff in python and wasn't able to find how to do
> it, would you happen to know how to "kill" the timed out thread?
> 
There is no way to "kill" a thread, other than set a flag and have the 
thread read it to realise the main thread wants it to stop.

regards
  Steve
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