How can I force my script to take at least 30 seconds to run? Here is OWTDI:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
my $start_time = time;
# All your other code goes here
my $end_time = time;
my $elapsed_time = $end_time - $start_time;
sleep 30 - $elapsed_time unless ($elapsed_time >= 30);
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I am not exactly sure why you need your script to take at least this long to run - most people want to take less time. If this has something to do with monitoring the process or something - there is surely a better way to do it.

Hope this helps - cheers L~R

UPDATE: I just realized that you might want it to be allowed to run longer than 30 seconds. In that case, it is like perrin said - not a Perl issue. Someone/something else is imposing this arbitrary limit.