Not quite. I mean more like this:

my $timeout = 5;
my @file_list;

eval {
       local $SIG{ALRM} = sub { die "alarm\n" };
       alarm $timeout;
       @file_list = `ls user/test/`;
       alarm 0;
};
if ($@) {
    die $@ unless $@ eq "alarm\n";   # propagate unexpected errors
    # timed out
    print "Have incomplete file list\n";
} else {
    print "Have complete file list\n";
}

foreach my $file (@file_list) {
    print "$file\n";
}
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