Question

Say if I have four functions as below:

def foo():
    subprocess.Popen('start /B someprogramA.exe', shell=True)

def bar():
    subprocess.Popen('start /B someprogramB.exe', shell=True)

def foo_kill():
    subprocess.Popen('taskkill /IM someprogramA.exe')

def bar_kill():
    subprocess.Popen('taskkill /IM someprogramB.exe')

How can I alternate foo and bar functions to run every, say 30 minutes?
Meaning: 1st 30mins – run foo, 2nd 30mins – run bar, 3rd 30mins – run foo, and so on. Each new run should ‘kill’ the previous thread/func.

I have a countdown timer threads, but not sure how to ‘alternate’ the functions.

class Timer(threading.Thread):
    def __init__(self, minutes):
        self.runTime = minutes
        threading.Thread.__init__(self)


class CountDownTimer(Timer):
    def run(self):
        counter = self.runTime
        for sec in range(self.runTime):
            #do something           
            time.sleep(60) #editted from 1800 to 60 - sleeps for a minute
            counter -= 1

timeout=30
c=CountDownTimer(timeout)
c.start()

EDIT: My solution with Nicholas Knight’s inputs…

import threading
import subprocess
import time

timeout=2 #alternate delay gap in minutes

def foo():
    subprocess.Popen('start /B notepad.exe', shell=True)

def bar():
    subprocess.Popen('start /B calc.exe', shell=True)

def foo_kill():
    subprocess.Popen('taskkill /IM notepad.exe')

def bar_kill():
    subprocess.Popen('taskkill /IM calc.exe')


class Alternator(threading.Thread):
    def __init__(self, timeout):
        self.delay_mins = timeout 
        self.functions = [(foo, foo_kill), (bar, bar_kill)]
        threading.Thread.__init__(self)

    def run(self):
        while True:
            for f, kf in self.functions:
                f()
                time.sleep(self.delay_mins*60)
                kf()

a=Alternator(timeout)
a.start()

Works fine.

Answer 1

You’re overcomplicating this.

while True:
    foo()
    time.sleep(1800)
    foo_kill()
    bar()
    time.sleep(1800)
    bar_kill()

Or if you want to easily add more functions later:

functions = [(foo, foo_kill), (bar, bar_kill), ] # Just append more as needed
while True:
    for f, kf in functions:
        f()
        time.sleep(1800)
        kf()