Question

It seems

import Queue  Queue.Queue().get(timeout=10) 

is keyboard interruptible (ctrl-c) whereas

import Queue  Queue.Queue().get() 

is not. I could always create a loop;

import Queue q = Queue()  while True:     try:         q.get(timeout=1000)     except Queue.Empty:         pass 

but this seems like a strange thing to do.

So, is there a way of getting an indefinitely waiting but keyboard interruptible Queue.get()?

Answer 1

Queue objects have this behavior because they lock using Condition objects form the threading module. So your solution is really the only way to go.

However, if you really want a Queue method that does this, you can monkeypatch the Queue class. For example:

def interruptable_get(self):     while True:         try:             return self.get(timeout=1000)         except Queue.Empty:             pass Queue.interruptable_get = interruptable_get 

This would let you say

q.interruptable_get() 

instead of

interruptable_get(q) 

although monkeypatching is generally discouraged by the Python community in cases such as these, since a regular function seems just as good.