I parsed a 500Kb of xls file and normally it takes around 8 seconds to complete. So I set an alarm for 5-7 seconds, and it dies successfully with timeout message. 
use strict;
use warnings;
use Spreadsheet::ParseExcel;

my $file = shift;
my $excel;
eval {
 local $SIG{ALRM} = sub { die "timeout\n" };
 alarm(5);
 $excel = Spreadsheet::ParseExcel::Workbook->Parse($file);
 die "Can't parse $file\n" unless defined $excel;
 alarm(0);
};

die $@ if $@;

# contiune with $excel object

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I can see two things in your code: a) warning on failed open. Instead, you should do some exception here because there's no point to continue if you can't open the file. 
open DUMP, ">filename" or die "Can't open: $!\n";

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b) you need to check $@ in all possible cases, not just timeout, to capture other potential errors. 
if ($@) { # something bad occures
 if ($@ =~ /TIME OUT/) {
   # do something regarding timeout
 } else {
   # do something with other reason,
   # such as failure on open
 }
 # stop here
}

# continue here

[download]

Open source softwares? Share and enjoy. Make profit from them if you can. Yet, share and enjoy!

In reply to Re: Timeout for parsing corrupted excel files by naikonta
in thread Timeout for parsing corrupted excel files by Andre_br

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