Update 10 minutes later.... fixed a couple of code bugs

This is alot more complex than an alarm, but you could run the regex in a separate thread, and have a second parallel thread time it out. Note you need a later version of threads, and Thread::Cancel. Just an idea. This allows you to issue keypress commands too :-)

#!/usr/bin/perl
# untested and various variable and thread resets ignored  
use warnings;
use strict;
use Glib;
use Term::ReadKey;
use threads;
use threads::shared;
use Thread::Cancel;

$|++;
ReadMode('cbreak');

# works non-blocking if read stdin is in a thread
my $count:shared = 0;
my $done:shared = 0;

my $thr = threads->new(\&read_in)->detach;
my $thr1 = threads->new(\&long_regex); 
# only can cancel non-detached threads

my $main_loop = Glib::MainLoop->new;
my $timer  = Glib::Timeout->add (100, \&timer_callback, undef, 1 );


$main_loop->run;
ReadMode('normal'); # restore normal tty settings

sub timer_callback{
     #do stuff
     $count++;
     print "\n$count\n";
    
     if ( ($count > 10) or ($done == 1)){  
              $thr1->cancel();
             print "thread canceled\n";
             return 0;
         }
    
    return 1;
}

sub long_regex{
        while(1){
         sleep 1;   
         }
     $done = 1;
}

sub read_in{
        while(1){
         my $char;
         if (defined ($char = ReadKey(0)) ) {
            print "\t\t$char->", ord($char),"\n";    
            #process key presses here
            #if($char eq 'q'){exit}
            if(length $char){exit}  # panic button on any key :-)
                
            }
          }
}

__END__
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