Rather than the sleep, you could use the asynchronous method :
alarm and a signal handler
(can be combined with fork)
$SIG{ALRM} = sub { #Your code here };

eval {
    alarm(60);    # Your code will be executed in 60 seconds
    # do something here
    # anytime during this 60 sec you can cancel the alarm with alarm(0
+)
};

[download]
Example of use:
You can manage timeout by limiting the time allowed to answer
(and/or even pop up a message to say "$x sec remaining...")

UPDATE :
As my previous example seems to be unclear, here is a complete example from a previous post to manage the timeout :
#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use IO::Socket;

{
  my $timeout = 0;
  my $sock = undef;

  $SIG{ALRM} = sub {$timeout = 1; die};

  eval {
      alarm (2);
       $sock = new IO::Socket::INET(PeerAddr=> '10.1.1.18',PeerPort =>
+ 29,);
      alarm (0);
  }

 die "Can't open socket: timeout=$timeout\n" if ($timeout or !$sock);
 print "I would print to the socket now, if I knew what I was connecte
+d to\n";

 close ($sock);
}

[download]


"Only Bad Coders Badly Code In Perl" (OBC2IP)

In reply to Re: Scheduling internal functions/processes to run within a program (like cron does programs) by arhuman
in thread Scheduling internal functions/processes to run within a program (like cron does programs) by BMaximus

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.