Raymond Hettinger added the comment: In general, it isn't good design to incorporate timeout logic in computation logic. What would be better is a general purpose, reusable, decoupled tool: run_with_time_limit(some_computation, some_args, time_limit). Such a tool might be based on separate process that can be timed or killed, it might use signals, or may be based on threading.Timer.
I did a quick look around the net. Timeouts on diff APIs aren't common (i.e GNU diff doesn't have a timeout) but there are a couple of precedents (you aren't the first to have had concerns about the running time for unfavorable inputs). ---------- nosy: +rhettinger _______________________________________ Python tracker <rep...@bugs.python.org> <http://bugs.python.org/issue24904> _______________________________________ _______________________________________________ Python-bugs-list mailing list Unsubscribe: https://mail.python.org/mailman/options/python-bugs-list/archive%40mail-archive.com
