Simplest way to timeout a Python function on Windows

Question

The following process runs for ten seconds. I want to kill it after five seconds.

import time

def hello():
    for _ in range(10):
        print("hello")
        time.sleep(1)

hello()

The solution could involve threads, multiprocessing or decorators. Similar questions have been asked before (sorry in advance), but the solutions have all been highly complex. Something as basic-sounding as this should be achievable with just a few lines of code.

Answer 1

depends on use case ... for this very specific example

import time

def hello(timeout=5):
    start_time = time.time()
    for _ in range(10):
        if time.time()-start_time > timeout:
           break
        print("hello")
        time.sleep(1)

hello()

is one way you could do it

alternatively you could use multiprocessing

import multiprocessing
...
if __name__ == "__main__":
  proc = multiprocessing.Process(target=hello)
  proc.start()
  time.sleep(5)
  proc.terminate()