I needed a way to allow a raw_input() call to time out. In case it’s useful to anyone, I wrote this solution which works under Unix-like OS’s.

Simply call nonBlockingRawInput("your prompt text", n) where n is the number of seconds you would like the prompt to wait until it times out. If it does time out, it will return with an empty string.import signal

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class AlarmException(Exception):
    pass

def alarmHandler(signum, frame):
    raise AlarmException

def nonBlockingRawInput(prompt='', timeout=20):
    signal.signal(signal.SIGALRM, alarmHandler)
    signal.alarm(timeout)
    try:
        text = raw_input(prompt)
        signal.alarm(0)
        return text
    except AlarmException:
        print '\nPrompt timeout. Continuing...'
    signal.signal(signal.SIGALRM, signal.SIG_IGN)
    return ''

[Edited Aug. 30, 2010 to fix a typo in the function name and generally improve formatting]

[Edited Feb 1, 2022 to add a tad more explanation, since the comments indicate people are still finding this!]