Have you looked at Win32::Process? If I'm interpreting you correctly, this seems to give you what you want: 
use Win32::Process;

Win32::Process::Create($ProcessObj,
               "c:\\Perl\\bin\\perl.exe",
               "perl -e \"print q(yr code here\n)\"",
               1,  
               NORMAL_PRIORITY_CLASS,
               ".")

$a = $ProcessObj->Wait(1000);         # units = ms
$ProcessObj->Kill($some_exit_code);

print "[$a] ==> I *think* this will be zero if the " .
  " process terminated on its own before Wait() finished\n";

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If the code in the $ProcessObj calls exit() on its own, the exit value will be retreivable via: 
$ProcessObj->GetExitCode($exitvalue);
print "The code returned: $exitvalue\n";

[download]
Not the most elegant solution (what with having to respecify the path for perl.exe, and I assume it's more memory intensive) but that's Win32 for you.

N.B.: That '1' means that the new process inherits the same filehandles as the code that produces it. If you don't want that, change it to '0'.

There's a lot of additional flags besides NORMAL_PRIORITY_CLASS. In particular, you can use 

DETACHED_PROCESS 
CREATE_NEW_CONSOLE 
DETACHED_PROCESS | IDLE_PRIORITY_CLASS

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(Note that's a bitwise or in the last example.) These flags are really poorly documented - I recommend finding one of Dave Roth's Win32 books).

-- Frag.

In reply to Re: Win32: timing out a perl subroutine by frag
in thread Win32: timing out a perl subroutine by osfameron

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