Stopping a bot command in discord.py

Question

So I have written a bot which spams like this :

@bot.command()
async def start (ctx):
    while True:
        await ctx.send("Pls use correct channels for discussion")
        await asyncio.sleep(300)

When i enter $start, the function starts. How to make a new command like $stop to stop the spam?

Answer 1

The answer by Cohen only prevents you from starting it, but it doesn't allow you to stop the infinite loop once it's going. What you should actually do, is check the value of the variable inside of the loop, in order to be able to stop it. Also, use booleans instead of hardcoding "true" and "false" in strings.

spam = True

@bot.command()
async def start (ctx):
    # EDIT: Set spam to True again so you can restart the loop
    global spam
    spam = True

    while true:
        # If "spam" is set to False, stop looping
        if not spam:
            break

        await ctx.send("Pls use correct channels for discussion")
        await asyncio.sleep(300)


@bot.command()
async def stop (ctx):
    global spam
    spam = False
    await ctx.send('spam stopped')

This checks whether or not it should keep running on every iteration of the loop. That way, when you set it to False, the loop stops.