Interrupt Python infinite while loop with key press

Question

I'm writing a simple script to prevent my computer from falling asleep (don't have admin privileges), and it centers around an infinite loop caused by a "while True" line:

import time, win32api
cursorX = 0
cursorY = 0
while True:
    cursorX, cursorY = win32api.GetCursorPos()
    time.sleep(600)
    cursorX = cursorX + 10
    win32api.SetCursorPos((cursorX,cursorY))
    cursorX, cursorY = win32api.GetCursorPos()
    time.sleep(600)
    cursorX = cursorX - 10
    win32api.SetCursorPos((cursorX,cursorY))

Now, I can interrupt this with a simple Ctrl + C, but I'd like to kill it more cleanly than that. Is there a simple way to write a condition to wait for a key press to kill the loop? I'm guessing it might involve an event, about which I know little.

whitebeard · Accepted Answer · 2014-08-15 17:27:44Z

4

A way to clean up the use of CTRL-C is to use try-except to catch the KeyboardInterrupt like:

try:
    while True:
        ...
        ...
except KeyboardInterrupt:
    exit

answered Aug 15, 2014 at 17:27

whitebeard

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Comments

jteezy14 · Accepted Answer · 2014-08-15 15:28:54Z

3

The last three lines I added will allow you to break out of the loop with any key being pressed. Dont forget the import of msvcrt

import time, win32api
import msvcrt
cursorX = 0
cursorY = 0
while True:
    cursorX, cursorY = win32api.GetCursorPos()
    time.sleep(600)
    cursorX = cursorX + 10
    win32api.SetCursorPos((cursorX,cursorY))
    cursorX, cursorY = win32api.GetCursorPos()
    time.sleep(600)
    cursorX = cursorX - 10
    win32api.SetCursorPos((cursorX,cursorY))
    if msvcrt.kbhit():
        if ord(msvcrt.getch()) != None:
            break

answered Aug 15, 2014 at 15:28

jteezy14

4664 silver badges11 bronze badges

2 Comments

Al.Sal Over a year ago

This isn't very portable; it wouldn't work with non-windows machines!

jteezy14 Over a year ago

Agreed, but none of this code would work on non-windows machines as it relies on the win32api

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