I don't know for sure how the AnyEvent timer works, but I know that a hung IO operation, as you describe will totally block a thread from running as expected, even signals won't make it in. My guess is the AnyEvent event-loop is being blocked by the hung IO operation, it just isn't getting any cpu time to function.

I was just looking at a few modules that my be what you need, Async-Interrupt and EV-Loop-Async and [IO-Async-Loop-AnyEvent.

Those modules put the eventloop in a separate thread, and it says somewhere in the README's that AnyEvent is a convenience module, for cases when you don't need the full power of EV and EV-Loop-Async.

You could do something yourself manually, create a separate thread that won't be blocked by another thread's hung IO. Here is a crude example:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use threads;
use threads::shared;

my $timer_go:shared = 0;

my $worker = threads->create(\&worker);
my $timer = threads->create(\&timer,$worker);

print "hit enter to start\n";
<>;
$timer_go=1;
<>;

$timer->join();
$worker->join();

sub timer {
  my $worker = shift;
   while(1){     
       if($timer_go){
        my $count = 0;
             while(1){ 
                  $count++;
                  if($count > 5){    
                         print "timed out\nHit enter to finish\n";
                          # Send a signal to a thread
                         $worker->kill('INT');
                         return;
                        } 
                  sleep 1;
                  print "timing $count\n";
            }
       }else{sleep 1}
    }
}

sub worker {
       $|++;
       $SIG{INT} = sub{ warn "Caught Zap!\n"; sleep 1; exit; };
       my $worker_pid = open( READ, "top -d 1 -b |" );
       
       print "\t$worker_pid\n";
       while(<READ>){}
       return;
}
[download]

Actually, AnyEvent::Socket::tcp_connect is nonblocking, so other events can still fire while the connection is getting built.

Wow, a lot of quality answers I was able to receive. You guys rock! >hung IO operation, as you describe will totally block a thread from running as expected, even signals won't make it in. This is true and I might be hitting this problem. Thank you for the tips on creating separate threads to avoid the hung IO. I am studying your example as I tried it on my box and it ran perfectly.