Emulated using timers that must be explicitly polled whenever Perl wants to dispatch "safe signals" and therefore cannot interrupt blocking system calls. (Win32)

I know that they do not work on win32, and why.

My question was: can signals -- alarm generated or otherwise -- interrupt blocking IO on *nix in under the auspices of safe-signals?

---

With the rise and rise of 'Social' network sites: 'Computers are making people easier to use everyday'

Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.

"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".

In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.

This works on *nix:

use strict   ;
use warnings ;

my $timeout_in = 5 ;

eval {
    local $SIG{ALRM} = sub { die "timed_out\n" };
    alarm($timeout_in);
    while(<>) { 
    alarm($timeout_in);
    my $in = $_ ;
    chomp( $in ) ;
    print $in . "\n" ;
    last if( $in eq 'exit' );
    }
    alarm(0) ;
};
if ($@) {
    die( "Hey ... whats with the slow typing ??\n" );
}
[download]

perlipc Deferred Signals (Safe Signals) Interrupting IO says it could happen, but it probably won't, you should use unsafe signals via POSIX::SigAction or Perl::Unsafe::Signals

"Does that work on *nix? Cos it never times out on Windows."

Works for me (on Linux).