Here is an example from alarm in the perlfunc manpage:

eval {
    local $SIG{ALRM} = sub { die "alarm\n" }; # NB: \n required
    alarm $timeout;
    $nread = sysread SOCKET, $buffer, $size;
    alarm 0;
};
if ($@) {
    die unless $@ eq "alarm\n";   # propagate unexpected errors
    # timed out
}
else {
    # didn't
}
__END__
[download]

You could probably adapt this to do what you need.

Update: Link fixed.