How to stop a program when a key is pressed in python?

Question

I have a program that is an endless loop that prints "program running" every 5 seconds and I want to stop it when I press the end key.

So I created a key listener that returns false if the end key is pressed. That should work if I won't have the endless loop. And I want it to work even when I'm in the endless loop.

Here's my code:

from pynput import keyboard
import time
def on_press(key):
    print key
    if key == keyboard.Key.end:
        print 'end pressed'
        return False        
with keyboard.Listener(on_press=on_press) as listener:
    while True:
        print 'program running'
        time.sleep(5)
    listener.join()

score 9 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 29 '18 at 07:51

9

from pynput import keyboard
import time

break_program = False
def on_press(key):
    global break_program
    print (key)
    if key == keyboard.Key.end:
        print ('end pressed')
        break_program = True
        return False

with keyboard.Listener(on_press=on_press) as listener:
    while break_program == False:
        print ('program running')
        time.sleep(5)
    listener.join()

answered Mar 29 '18 at 07:51

Dariusz Krynicki

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that's actually so easy and simple! thank you for reminding me how dumb I am! – Doron Sever Mar 29 '18 at 07:54
does that mean ```listener.join()``` is called while the ```while``` loop is running? Also, I got ```Exception has occurred: NameError name 'break_program' is not defined``` – 101is5 Aug 30 '23 at 14:08
no, it is outside of while loop. – Dariusz Krynicki Aug 31 '23 at 07:49
break_program is a global variable in the code snippet i shared. show me your module please. – Dariusz Krynicki Aug 31 '23 at 07:49

How to stop a program when a key is pressed in python?

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