Problem is i need the exit code from the shell command, so i can't change the code to fork/exec

There is no such limitation when using fork/exec. The waitpid built-in lets you retrieve the exit status of the child.

update: if you want to get the output from the program, you would like to launch the process using open: 

my $pid = open my $fh, '-|', @cmd or die "open failed $!";

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And then use a select loop to read from $fh while checking that it does not time out or otherwise send a signal to the process.

In reply to Re: Need Function for Timing out shell commands by salva
in thread Need Function for Timing out shell commands by bae11208

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