Hello All, I've successfully figured out how to use a pipe / fork / alarm combination to successfully kill a child process after a given time. What I can not figure out is how to redirect the output of the child command to an array in the parent command if the command runs successfully. I've been searching and can not come up with a reasonable answer. 
sub runcmd {
    my @cmd = @_;
    defined( my $child_pid = fork() ) or die "fork: $!";

    if ($child_pid) {
        #we are parent
        eval {
            local $SIG{ALRM} = sub {timeout($child_pid);};
            alarm 5;
            waitpid $child_pid, 0;
            alarm 0;
        };

        if ($@){print "oops: $@";}

    }
    else {
        #we are child
        exec @cmd or die "exec: $!";
    }
}

sub timeout {
    my $pid = @_;
    kill 'TERM' => $pid;
    waitpid $pid, 0;
    die "reaped $pid\n";
}

[download]
Anyone have any suggestions? Thanks, Corey

In reply to fork - alarm - output by chart3399

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