This works for me on both Linux and Windows (Strawberry Perl). First, we set a timeout in the $time variable, which in this example is two seconds. Then, inside of an eval, we simulate a long (relatively) running command, which is wrapped by an ALRM signal handler. If the command runs longer than the timeout (in the example, I simulate a long running command with sleep), we catch the error message caught from die, and act on it. Otherwise, we display the output of the command

Reduce the sleep to a lower number than $time (ie. zero) to get the return properly:

use warnings;
use strict;

my $time = 2;
my $cmd = 'dir';
my $check = 1;
my $output;

print "check is $check\n";

eval {
        local $SIG{ALRM} = sub { die 'timed out'; };
        alarm $time;

        $output = `$cmd`;

        sleep 4;

        $check++;
        alarm 0;
};

if ($@ && $@ =~ /timed out/){
    print "damn command timed out!\n";
}
else {
    print "$output\n";
}

print "check is now $check\n";

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In reply to Re: Run and kill external programm after x seconds by stevieb
in thread Run and kill external programm after x seconds by demichi

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