http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=633822


in reply to Re^3: Backticks and SIGALRM
in thread Backticks and SIGALRM

as you are using qx() (which gets the full output anyway) maybe you can simply redirect the output of your external command to a file (using the system shell and process that later

my $cmd = "$ext_cmd > $my_output"; # using unixlike shell system($cmd) == 0 or die; #

(ignore if your OS is not unixlike) what does happen if you manually send SIGALRM to that external process? (wrap it in a shell if the execution time is too short).

cheers --stephan