...so that if the worker takes too long

What exactly is taking too long? I.e., does the worker program stop delivering output, so that the $str = <WORKER> blocks, or does it just keep outputting lines for too long?  In the latter case, I wouldn't expect the alarm to work, because the alarm is always being reset immediately after the read (which takes almost no time if it succeeds)...

An alternative to the alarm approach would be to fork and have the child kill the external process after a while.  (I'll post an example later (unless someone else has already done so by then) — it's lunch-time here...)

In reply to Re: Cannot catch ALRM signal for timeout by almut
in thread Cannot catch ALRM signal for timeout by Magice

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.