#! perl -slw
use strict;

sub systemWithTimeout {
    my( $timeout, $command ) = @_;
    my $pid = open my $in, "$command |" or die $!;
    my $endtime = time() + $timeout;
    Win32::Sleep 100 while time() < $endtime and kill 0, $pid;
    Win32::Sleep 0; ## Give the other process a timeslot to go away
    my $wasKilled = kill 9, $pid if kill 0, $pid;
    return wantarray ? ( $wasKilled , <$in> ): $wasKilled;
}

for ( 4 .. 6 ) {
    print "5 second timeout on a process that runs for $_ seconds";
    my( $timeout, @results ) = systemWithTimeout 5,
        qq[ perl -wle" sleep $_; print $$, ' ', scalar localtime;" ];

    printf "The process %s timeout\n", $timeout ? 'did' : 'did not';
    print "it returned\n @results" if @results;
}

print "\nscalar context";
if( systemWithTimeout 5, qq[ perl -wle" sleep 3; print for 1 .. 100" ] ) {
    print "command timed out";
}
else {
    print "command completed";
}

if( systemWithTimeout 5, qq[ perl -wle" sleep 7; print for 1 .. 100" ] ) {
    print "command timed out";
}
else {
    print "command completed";
}

__END__
C:\test>539889
5 second timeout on a process that runs for 4 seconds
The process did not timeout
it returned
 1896 Wed Mar 29 11:50:25 2006

5 second timeout on a process that runs for 5 seconds
The process did not timeout
it returned
 1896 Wed Mar 29 11:50:31 2006

5 second timeout on a process that runs for 6 seconds
The process did timeout

scalar context
command completed
command timed out