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.

In reply to Re: Time-limited input on STDIN by jamesduncan
in thread Time-limited input on STDIN by ajdelore

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