For your alarm suggestion, I've tried trying to work with the alarm funtion but had no joy, for example the following doesn't work.

(using my $buf=<>; instead of the wmi stuff)

$SIG{'ALRM'}=\&time_out;

while(1) {

  eval {
    alarm(5);
    my $buf=<>;
    alarm(0);
  };

  print "next\n";

}

exit;

sub time_out {
    print "fed up waiting, next please\n";
    die "FED UP WAITING";
}
[download]

The script should wait for user input, and get 'fed up' after 5 seconds. Problem being the alarm never seems to get called.

also the actual `perldoc -f alarm` example doesn't seem to work either.

eval {
    local $SIG{ALRM} = sub { die "alarm\n" }; # NB: \n required
    alarm 2;
    `dir /s c:`;
    alarm 0;
};
[download]

Surely alarm should interrupt the timeconsuming `dir /s c:` (recursive dir) after 2 seconds?

Seems that alarm is not working on ActiveState (http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/docs/ActivePerl/faq/Windows/ActivePerl-Winfaq5.html).

I'd advise you to have a look at Time::hires.

HTH


--
zejames