Dynamic Output of time progression

Question

I have seen many suggestions on how to show a progress bar based on iteration in Python. My question is is there a way to do this based on time?

Use Case

func() is not-deterministic function whose run-time varies from seconds to nearly 30 minutes. I want as many results as I can gather in the space of an hour and therefore am running func() as many times as I can in the space of an hour. As such, I don't want to print an update in the tradition way as I don't have any way of knowing if it is stuck or just on a long case (both happen).I don't have control of func() or I would try to alleviate some of these misfortunes. As such I would like something as simple as a countdown from an hour that updates every 5 minutes, regardless of the runtime of func() as a sign of life.

results = []
T1, T2 = time.time(), time.time()
while T2 - T1 < 1 * 60 * 60:
    results.append( func() )
    T2 = time.time()

My initial thoughts would be to do something with threading or pools.

Answer 1

old_stdout = sys.stdout
sys.stdout = open("log.txt","w") # now calling print will write to this logfile
results = []
T1, T2 = time.time(), time.time()
while T2 - T1 < 1 * 60 * 60:
    results.append( func() )
    T2 = time.time()
    old_stdout.write("%0.2f%% Complete\n"%(100.0*(T2-T2)/(1.0*60*60)))

would redirect your normal stdout to a log file, and then print percent complete status messages after each run

it sounds like you want a thread

import time,threading,random

class func_thread(threading.Thread):
   def __init__(self,callback):
      self.callback = callback
      self.killed = False
      threading.Thread.__init__(self)
   def Kill(self):
      self.killed = True
   def run(self):
      while not self.killed:
          self.callback(func())

def func():
    time.sleep(random.uniform(0.5,2.0))
    return 5

seconds = 1
minutes = 60
update_interval = 25 * seconds
done_time = 5 * minutes
update_format ="# Results:%04d  Seconds Elapsed:%0.3f"
def main():
    my_results = []
    start_time = time.time()
    fs = func_thread(my_results.append)
    fs.start()
    while time.time() - start_time < done_time:
         print update_format%(len(my_results),time.time()-start_time)
         time.sleep(update_interval)
    fs.Kill()
    fs.join()
    print "DONE FINAL COUNT:",len(my_results)