in reply to Re^2: Timing out ``?
in thread Timing out ``?

No. As the docs say,
If you want to use alarm to time out a system call you need to use an eval/die pair.
Your code will emit a warning, but will continue to hang until the backticks return.

Update: Parent's code has been corrected.

#11929 First ask yourself `How would I do this without a computer?' Then have the computer do it the same way.

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom