Python: set a function timeout without using signal or threads?

Is there a way to have a function raise an error if it 开发者_StackOverflowtakes longer than a certain amount of time to return? I want to do this without using signal (because I am not in the main thread) or by spawning more threads, which is cumbersome.

If your function is looping through a lot of things, you could check the elapsed time during each iteration of the loop... but if it's blocked on something for the long period, then you need to have some other thread which can be handling the timing stuff while the thread you're timing is blocked.