Run certain code every n seconds

Question

Is there a way to, for example, print Hello World! every n seconds? For example, the program would go through whatever code I had, then once it had been 5 seconds (with time.sleep()) it would execute that code. I would be using this to update a file though, not print Hello World.

For example:

startrepeat('print('Hello World'), .01) #repeats print('Hello World') ever .01 seconds 
for i in range(5):
    print(i)

>> Hello World!
>> 0
>> 1
>> 2
>> Hello World!
>> 3
>> Hello World!
>> 4

Answer 1

def update():
    import time
    while True:
        print 'Hello World!'
        time.sleep(5)

That'll run as a function. The while True: makes it run forever. You can always take it out of the function if you need.

Answer 2

You can start a separate thread whose sole duty is to count for 5 seconds, update the file, repeat. You wouldn't want this separate thread to interfere with your main thread.

Answer 3

Please read this for sample use of thread.sleep() and threading considerations (including what the GIL can do to performance, which is that it will wreck performance, keep multi-threading extremely simple and lightweight in python). This sample also demonstrates the active objects pattern of multithread processing, which I recommend highly.

Answer 4

import threading

def printit():
  threading.Timer(5.0, printit).start()
  print "Hello, World!"

printit()

# continue with the rest of your code

Answer 5

from threading import Thread
import time

def printHelloWorld(n):
    while True:
        print('Hello world...')
        time.sleep(n)

t = Thread(target=printHelloWorld, args=(.01, ))
t.run()