Python Equivalent of setInterval()?

This might be the correct snippet you were looking for:

import threading

def set_interval(func, sec):
    def func_wrapper():
        set_interval(func, sec)
        func()
    t = threading.Timer(sec, func_wrapper)
    t.start()
    return t

This is a version where you could start and stop. It is not blocking. There is also no glitch as execution time error is not added (important for long time execution with very short interval as audio for example)

import time, threading

StartTime=time.time()

def action() :
    print('action ! -> time : {:.1f}s'.format(time.time()-StartTime))


class setInterval :
    def __init__(self,interval,action) :
        self.interval=interval
        self.action=action
        self.stopEvent=threading.Event()
        thread=threading.Thread(target=self.__setInterval)
        thread.start()

    def __setInterval(self) :
        nextTime=time.time()+self.interval
        while not self.stopEvent.wait(nextTime-time.time()) :
            nextTime+=self.interval
            self.action()

    def cancel(self) :
        self.stopEvent.set()

# start action every 0.6s
inter=setInterval(0.6,action)
print('just after setInterval -> time : {:.1f}s'.format(time.time()-StartTime))

# will stop interval in 5s
t=threading.Timer(5,inter.cancel)
t.start()

Output is :

just after setInterval -> time : 0.0s
action ! -> time : 0.6s
action ! -> time : 1.2s
action ! -> time : 1.8s
action ! -> time : 2.4s
action ! -> time : 3.0s
action ! -> time : 3.6s
action ! -> time : 4.2s
action ! -> time : 4.8s

Just keep it nice and simple.

import threading

def setInterval(func,time):
    e = threading.Event()
    while not e.wait(time):
        func()

def foo():
    print "hello"

# using
setInterval(foo,5)

# output:
hello
hello
.
.
.

EDIT : This code is non-blocking

import threading

class ThreadJob(threading.Thread):
    def __init__(self,callback,event,interval):
        '''runs the callback function after interval seconds

        :param callback:  callback function to invoke
        :param event: external event for controlling the update operation
        :param interval: time in seconds after which are required to fire the callback
        :type callback: function
        :type interval: int
        '''
        self.callback = callback
        self.event = event
        self.interval = interval
        super(ThreadJob,self).__init__()

    def run(self):
        while not self.event.wait(self.interval):
            self.callback()



event = threading.Event()

def foo():
    print "hello"

k = ThreadJob(foo,event,2)
k.start()

print "It is non-blocking"

Change Nailxx's answer a bit and you got the answer!

from threading import Timer

def hello():
    print "hello, world"
    Timer(30.0, hello).start()

Timer(30.0, hello).start() # after 30 seconds, "hello, world" will be printed

The sched module provides these abilities for general Python code. However, as its documentation suggests, if your code is multithreaded it might make more sense to use the threading.Timer class instead.