The best way I know of to do the latter is not specifically documented in perlipc. Use alarm:

alarm 10;        # send me a signal in 10 seconds
# do some code which may not complete
alarm 0;        # if we get here in time, disable the alarm
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If you're going to fork off children, be sure to read the section on SIGNALS in perlipc. You might even do something like this, in your child processes:

eval {
    local $SIG{ALRM} = sub { die "child process took too long to compl
+ete" };
    alarm 10;
# do whatever your little heart desires, hope it's fast enough
    alarm 0;    # whew, just made it
};
if ($@ && $@ !~ /alarm clock restart/) { # abort the child process gra
+cefully 
} else {
    # send the parent the information ?
}
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