Dear Monks, I'd like run a script that will listen for input and if nothing is entered in a given amount of time, it will run some other function and continue presenting the user with a prompt. For some reason my code is not working. Can anyone provide any hints? Thanks much! 
#!/usr/bin/perl -w

$SIG{ALRM} = sub { command() };

command();

if ($@) {
     if ($@ =~ /timeout/) {
                command();
     } else {
                alarm(0);           # clear the still-pending alarm
                die;                # propagate unexpected exception
     }
}


sub command {
        my $date = `date`;
        chomp($date);
        alarm(5);
        print "\n";
        print "prompt $date > ";
        <>;
        alarm(0);
}

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In reply to Timeout on STDIN by yoda54

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