cross platform alternative for signal.SIGALRM?

[Christian Gollwitzer]

Am 12.11.15 um 07:14 schrieb Marko Rauhamaa:
> Terry Reedy <tjreedy at udel.edu>:
>
>> The cross-platform 3.4 asyncio module has some functions with
>> timeouts.
>
> Even that doesn't forcefully interrupt an obnoxious blocking function
> call like
>
>     time.sleep(10000)

A blocking call - granted. But what happens in a blocking loop, i.e.

for i in range(10000000000000000000000000):
	pass

?

My understanding of async is that it creates an event loop. In which 
case the loop has no chance to run within a block of code that computes 
anything, is that correct? Or does it hook into the interpreter and is 
able to interrupt the program between bytecodes?

> I'm thinking the only portable way is to run a watchdog process with
> subprocess or multiprocessing.

What about a thread which calls exit() after the timeout? Does that 
forcefully kill the whole process?

	Christian