How to do other stuff while user deciding if write anything in raw_input?

Question

while True:
  mess = raw_input('Type: ')
  //other stuff

While user doesn't type anything, I can't do //other stuff. How can I do, that other stuff would be executed, but, if user types anything at that time, mess would change its value?

Answer 1

You should spawn your other stuff in a worker thread.

import threading
import time
import sys

mess = 'foo'

def other_stuff():
  while True:
    sys.stdout.write('mess == {}\n'.format(mess))
    time.sleep(1)

t = threading.Thread(target=other_stuff)
t.daemon=True
t.start()

while True:
  mess = raw_input('Type: ')

This is a trivial example with mess as a global. Note that for thread-safe passing of objects between worker thread and main thread, you should use a Queue object to pass things between threads, don't use a global.