Is there a way to trap the Net::FTP error message before find myself in the operating system so that I can act on it?

For this you can use the eval function to trap fatal errors from Net::FTP functions.

Is there a way to make my own timeout function?

For this you will want to have a read through the alarm function and the perlipc documentation.

For example:

my $retrieval = undef;
my $timeout = 120;

eval {
    local $SIG{'ALRM'} = sub { die 'timeout' };
    alarm $timeout;
    $retrieval = $ftp->get($remote_file, $local_file); 
    alarm 0;
};
if ($@) {

    if ($@ =~ /timeout/) {
    }
}
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