T'is easy with a thread:

#! perl -slw
use strict;
use threads;
use threads::shared;

$|++;

our $N ||= 11;
my $TIMEOUT = 10;
my $extApp = q[ perl -lwe"$|++; print $_ and sleep 1 for 1 .. $ARGV[0]
+" ];

my @results :shared;
my $pid :shared;

async {
    $pid = open my $fh, "$extApp $N |" or die "$!, $^E";
    @results = <$fh>;
}->detach;

kill 0, $pid while sleep 1 and $TIMEOUT--;
kill 3, $pid and warn 'Command timed out' if $TIMEOUT;

print "command return \n'@results'";

__END__
c:\test>junk6 -N=8
command return
'1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
'

c:\test>junk6 -N=10
command return
'1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
 9
 10
'

c:\test>junk6 -N=12
Command timed out at c:\test\junk6.pl line 21.
command return
'1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
 9
 10
 11
'
[download]

Wrapping that into a sub is left as an exercise.

BrowserUk,
Thanks for your reply, it's a working solution to the problem. :)
Many thanks for all replies.

Nemo

YW. Here's a slightly cleaner implementation. The only caveat is that it abitrarially throws away any output received prior to the timeout occuring. Only you can decide how you want to signal timeout if you also wish to retrieve any partial output.

I guess this could form the basis of a whole CPAN module, but it just seems altogether too trivial for that?

#! perl -slw
use strict;

$|++;

my $extApp = q[ perl -lwe"$|++; print $_ and sleep 1 for 1 .. 10" ];

for my $timeout ( map $_*2, 4,5,6 ) {
    my @results = timedCommand( $extApp, $timeout );
    if( @results ) {
        print "Command returned\n", join '', @results;
    }
    else {
        print "Command timed out after $timeout seconds";
    }
}


sub timedCommand {
    use threads;
    use threads::shared;
    my( $cmd, $timeout ) = @_;

    my @results :shared;
    my $pid :shared;

    async {
        $pid = open my $fh, "$cmd |" or die "$!, $^E";
        @results = <$fh>;
    }->detach;

    kill 0, $pid while sleep 1 and $timeout--;
    kill 3, $pid and return if $timeout;
    return @results;
}
__END__
c:\test>junk6
Command timed out after 8 seconds
Command returned
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

Command returned
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
[download]

---

Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.

"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority".

In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice.

"Too many [] have been sedated by an oppressive environment of political correctness and risk aversion."

I worked around it the other day by

1. forking
2. Setting execution time limit in the child with BSD::Resource
3. writing result to a temporary file
4. in the parent, wait for the child and read the temp file

This is rather messy (and probably not very secure because the handling of temporary files is tricky). And I couldn't find a sandbox executer on cpan :(

BTW I needed that mess for an evalbot for #perl6.

`echo start; sleep 5; echo done`
[download]

`echo start; sleep 0; echo done`
[download]

Anno

Yes
I have tested the alarm code in isolation using an infinite loop and it does work as expected. The alarm timeout works correctly when the external app is executed using "system" but as I need to collect the output I cannot use it.
Thank you for your reply.

Nemo

Can I pipe the output of the system command to my own program and read it in line by line. That way getting the best of both?

When did system() enter the equation? I tested your code using backticks and it works as expected.

Anno

This is using backticks (not a system call, as you have in your code. All I did was to replace the extApp $_ with sleep 5.

Can you give some info on your platform and perl version please, and also let us know what the following script prints on your system?

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

my @result;
$SIG{ALRM} = sub {
    print "ALARM fired\n";
    die "timeout";
};

eval {
    alarm(3);
    @result = `sleep 5`;
    alarm(0);
};

print "Running after alarm: $@\n";

if ($@) {
    if ($@ =~ /timeout/i) {
      push @result, "App has hanged itself\n";
    } else {
        alarm(0);           # clear the still-pending alarm
        die;                # propagate unexpected exception
    } 
} 

print "result is: ", join('', @result), "\n";
[download]

ALARM fired
Running after alarm: timeout at tt.pl line 8.

result is: App has hanged itself
[download]

Hi Jbert,
I haven't tested your code but it will work correctly, I tested the alarm code before with Inifinite loops and it works as expected. The problem is the hanging app in the shell. I am running on MSWIN32-x86-multi-thread Perl version 5.8.8.

Thank you for your replies.
Nemo

Ah, OK. So you want to be able to kill off the offending sub-process when the alarm fires? Then you either need to walk the process table, looking for a process whose parent is your script, or start the process in a way which allows you to get the pid and the output.

e.g. run the code under a piped open, something like this (untested):

   my $cmd = "your command";
   my $pid = open(my $fh, "$cmd|");
   $SIG{ALRM} = sub {
     print "Alarm fired, killing pid $pid\n";
     # Replace with windows-specific code to kill process
     kill 15, $pid;
   };
   die "Can't run command [$cmd] : $!" unless $pid;

   # Or do some other processing with $fh
   push @result, $_ while (<$fh>);
   close $fh
     or die "Problem running [$cmd] : $?";
[download]

If your child process starts yet more children (and they don't exit when the parent is killed), you'll have to write more elaborate cleanup code.

Dig through the windows-related process modules on CPAN and you should find what you need for the cleanup.

#!/usr/bin/perl

# qx does interpolation too
# generalized form for using backticks
$output=qx(ls -la);
print "$output\n";

$output = `ls`;
print "$output\n";
[download]

It is useful to remember that qx// is backticks. It's just another syntax to get there. It doesn't exercise any different code path, it won't behave any different, except how the parser finds the end of the string (you could type qx/foo `blah`/ without needing special escape characters to get the backquotes into the shell).

Also, q// is single-quoted, and qq// is double-quoted. Same thing.

--
[ e d @ h a l l e y . c c ]

Thank you for your replies.
I attempted the solution using qx but I had the same result. Executing the command using the shell seems to be the problem, the sigalrm is not delivered. It's an interesting problem I haven't come across before.
I was considering using system to redirect the output of the command to a temporary text file and then reading the tmp file to parse output one line at a time.
I should also mention I am working on Win32 Boo! ;)

Nemo

qx and `` produce the same code.