You forgot to mention what your problem is :)

Essentially, what you've attempted should work, presuming you fill in appropriate values for the variables you haven't defined here...

What looks a bit weird, though, is this piece

        $counter++;
        if ($counter < 18)
        {
            print "\n-E- TimeOut.\n";
            exit 1;
        }
[download]

Depending on what value $counter starts with, it will either exit immediately (after the first line having been read), or never. I.e. in case $counter starts with 18 or greater, incrementing it further will not make the condition $counter < 18 ever become true...