To give a concrete example of that: 

use warnings;
my @list = ();
eval {
    local $SIG{ALRM} = sub { die "SSH timed out" };
    alarm 5; #If after 5 seconds nothing happens, then call SIGALRM
    @list = `ssh machine "ls path"`;
    alarm 0; #Reset
};
if( $@ ) {
    warn "I could not do that: $@";
} else {
    do_something_with( @list );
}

[download]

Update: After being corrected, I have changed the code to make it work

~Thomas~
confess( "I offer no guarantees on my code." );

In reply to Re^2: Timing out ``? by thomas895
in thread Timing out ``? by slgilley

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