How do I skip an input after a certain amount of time? Python 3

Question

I am new to Python and am teaching myself. I am trying to make a slot machine game in Python 3. I want to give the user 0.2 seconds to hit 'enter' to stop it, but I can't figure it out. Here is the code for the slot machine:

def pyslot():
score = 0

    while True:
        rand1 = random.randint(1, 9)
        rand2 = random.randint(1, 9)
        rand3 = random.randint(1, 9)
        print(str(rand1) + "  " + str(rand2) + "  " + str(rand3))
        time.sleep(0.2)
        stop = input("")
        if stop == "":
            break
    if rand1 == rand2 and rand1 == rand3:
        print("All three?! No way!")
        score += 50
    elif (rand1 == rand2 and rand1 != rand3) or (rand2 == rand3 and rand2 != rand1) or (rand1 == rand3 and rand1 != rand2):
        print("Two are the same! Not too shabby!")
        score += 20
    else:
        print("No matches... too bad!")
    return score

I don't know what is wrong. I have tried multiple solutions on stack overflow, but none work. Any help would be appreciated. Also, how do I clear the last line of print (so the program doesn't print a huge number of slot rolls)

I know turtle can accept key presses anytime, so if you use turtle or tkinter to draw your slot machine, you might be able to have it understand you pressing a key. and you could set a variable `bypass=True` then `time.sleep(0.2)` and finally `bypass=False` and then have a rule if the key is pressed AND bypass == True, then it will do that. or something. Just a thought process, sorry I don't have a better answer. — Robert Cotterman, Jul 30 '21 at 18:04
There's a [thread about this](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1335507/keyboard-input-with-timeout) — sj95126, Jul 30 '21 at 18:13

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 30 '21 at 20:08

You can use keyboard module to detect key press and halt the process according to it. First of all you need to install it using: pip install keyboard, then import in your code. Here is how it could be done (by the way I have refactored conditions since there were quite redundant checks):

import random, time, keyboard

def pyslot():
    score = 0

    while True:
        rand1 = random.randint(1, 9)
        rand2 = random.randint(1, 9)
        rand3 = random.randint(1, 9)
        print(str(rand1) + "  " + str(rand2) + "  " + str(rand3))
        time.sleep(0.2)
        if keyboard.is_pressed('enter'):
            print("You pressed Enter") # just to test
            break
    
    if rand1 == rand2 == rand3:
        print("All three?! No way!")
        score += 50
    elif rand1 == rand2 or rand2 == rand3 or rand1 == rand3:
        print("Two are the same! Not too shabby!")
        score += 20
    else:
        print("No matches... too bad!")
    return score

pyslot()

Note that you need to run as an administrator to give python access to your keyboard.

sudo python <file_name> could do the job. Finally, here is the output:

7  9  1
4  4  4
6  4  6
2  9  7
5  7  2
4  5  3
4  9  7
4  5  1

You pressed Enter
No matches... too bad!

How do I skip an input after a certain amount of time? Python 3

1 Answers1