Python cancel process using ctrl + c without quitting program?

Question

I want to be able to quit a action my program is preforming by hitting ctrl + c, but without quitting the program entirely. I'm sure there is a thread about this somewhere, but I couldn't find anything related to what I want. Here is what I want

def sleep():
    time.sleep(3600)

print("Hello!")

.

>Start program
>Hit ctrl + c 10 seconds later,
>Program prints 'Hello!'

You can wrap your function in a `try` `except` block and listen for the `KeyboardInterrupt`, similar to [this](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21120947/catching-keyboardinterrupt-in-python-during-program-shutdown) post. — Thymen, Nov 29 '20 at 19:01

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 29 '20 at 19:14

1

You can wrap your function in a try except block and listen for the KeyboardInterrupt, similar to this post.

Full code:

def sleep():
    try:
        time.sleep(3600)
    except KeyboardInterrupt:
        pass

print("Hello!")

answered Nov 29 '20 at 19:14

Thymen

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score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 29 '20 at 19:19

As mentioned, you can catch the keyboard interrupt. As an additional wrinkle, its common to let 2 ctrl-c presses terminate the program. In this example, if user hits the eject button twice in 2 seconds, we really do exit.

import time

kb_interrupt_time = 0.0

for i in range(100):
    try:
        time.sleep(1)
    except KeyboardInterrupt:
        now = time.time()
        if now - kb_interrupt_time < 2:
            print("done")
            raise
        print("interrupted")
        kb_interrupt_time = now
    print("beep", i)

Python cancel process using ctrl + c without quitting program?

2 Answers2