How to create a delay before each print?

Question

Hi so I'm creating a text-based game with Python and I want to make it so that before each print statement there is a one second delay.

My current solution is to do this:

time.sleep(1)
name = input('Do you happen to remember what your name was? ').capitalize()
print(name + ", that's a nice name.")
time.sleep(1)
print("Well it seems that you are all better now so I'm going to have to let you go")

However, it is annoying to put a time.sleep before each print!

So I'm wondering if anyone knows a more efficient way of doing this.

pwxcoo · Accepted Answer · 2018-08-12T08:48:05.640

1

why not use function to do it?

def dprint(s, delay=1):
    time.sleep(delay)
    print(s)

Is it ok for you?

dprint("hello")

edited Aug 12 '18 at 08:48

answered Aug 12 '18 at 08:45

pwxcoo

2,903
2
15
21

as an improvement we can make `delay` parameter with `1` as default argument – Azat Ibrakov Aug 12 '18 at 08:47
@AzatIbrakov yes, I see he said one second explicitly. – pwxcoo Aug 12 '18 at 08:49
@BobBob pleasure, you can accept the solution if helpful. :p – pwxcoo Aug 12 '18 at 08:55

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 12 '18 at 09:14

You could patch the print() function using mock.patch() like this if you need this functionality to be temporary but for all print() function subcalls:

import time
from unittest import mock

OLD_PRINT = print

def make_delayed_print(delay):

    def delayed_print(*args, **kwargs):
        time.sleep(delay)
        OLD_PRINT(*args, **kwargs)

    return delayed_print


with mock.patch('builtins.print', make_delayed_print(1)):
    print(1)
    print(2)

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 12 '18 at 10:36

Here's how I would do it, which will support all existing calls to print() without changing the name of the function being called to something else and it supports multiple arguments and keyword arguments (just like the regular print() function does):

import time

DELAY = 1
regular_print = print  # Save built-in function.

def print(*args, **kwarg):
    time.sleep(DELAY)
    regular_print(*args, **kwarg)

How to create a delay before each print?

3 Answers3