Re: Time-limited input on STDIN

I may be reading the problem wrong, but you could try using alarm and $SIG{ALRM} inside an eval block.

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;

my $text;
print "Prompt: ";
alarm(10);
eval {
  local $SIG{ALRM} = sub { die };
  $text = <STDIN>;
};
print "done accepting text\n";
[download]

James.

Comment on Re: Time-limited input on STDIN Download Code

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Re: Re: Time-limited input on STDIN by bobn (Chaplain) on Aug 08, 2003 at 22:42 UTC
You should use `alarm(0)` after the entry of data to turn off the alarm. Ottherwise, your program will be alarm'd even though you entered text in the allowed amount of time. See `perldoc -f alarm` for details. --Bob Niederman, http://bob-n.com	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Re: Time-limited input on STDIN by ajdelore (Pilgrim) on Aug 11, 2003 at 17:58 UTC
Thanks, this worked great. ++ to jamesduncan and bobn. One minor note: I did have to set `local $/ = undef;` within the eval block -- otherwise, it was finishing as soon as I pressed enter after a word. </ajdelore>	[reply] [d/l]