time.time wont return a useable number

[Nyscersul]

Firstly, thanks for your swift response. :)

What do you mean by refactoring please?

I am a self taught coder so i dont really have much in the way of direction. What i would have wanted to use, before ineffective google searches got involved, is below.

The original code was copied from my current state but the code below is basically what i had to begin with, but threw the same error as above.

Again, simplified to only the relevant parts.

temptime=time.time()
textlooptime=time.time()
textrepeats=0
while (true):
      temptime=textlooptime - time.time()
      if (textrepeats > 2):
             # this is where the catch out responds to 
             # repeated short intervals
             textlooptime=time.time()
             textrepeats=0
      elif temptime > 3:
             # do the first lot - we detected a long 
             # enough interval
             textrepeats = 0
             textlooptime=time.time()
      elif (temptime <= 3):
             # do the second lot, interval too short.
             textrepeats = textrepeats + 1
             textlooptime=time.time()

Clearly, the code is different, but im out and on mobile.
I know my syntax was correct (: etc) on the firstlot because idle wont let it run until thats covered. The code runs on a thread and actually closes the thread when this happens, making the rest of the program go haywire.

I have simplified this way as this is the only change made, and its the only thing im having trouble with.

Thanks again :)

- edited - forgot some declarations