I want to spawn an external process and if it does not return in a certain amount of time return control to the perl code and use some defaults instead of the data from the external process. The external process has no concept of timeouts so they have to be done in the perl code. How do I interrupt processes like this in my perl code? 
# psuedo - code

my($cmd) = "/run/external/prog";
my(@results) = `$cmd`; 

@results = defaults unless ($cmd finished in x secs);

In reply to how to make timeouts? by Anonymous Monk

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