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Is there any way of enforcing a timeout on MailMsg? (And also MailFile?)

The general way to implement a "time-out" is to install an ALRM signal handler, then set the alarm function with alarm(NumOfSeconds).

$SIG{ALRM} = sub {print "oh darn, timeout!; die "timeout";}
alarm(10);  #10 second "countdown"
somefunction();
alarm(0);  #disables alarm
# only get here if less than 10 seconds elapsed
# during somefunction()
[download]

There are a WHOLE mess of caveats and "yeah but's" with alarms. So this is a complex subject! One common problem on Windows is that sleep() is implemented in terms of ALRM and this can cause some weird side-effects. But I assume that you are on Unix.

Perl >= 7.3 implements what are called "safe" or deferred signals which means that it doesn't handle them right away by default. Good news is that the Perl program can continue after an ALRM like this. Bad news is that in some cases the alarm signal might not be delivered.

Read this: cpan: Deferred Signals.
also, Perl doc alarm

I am sure that other Monks will suggest other references.
Try a normal "safe" mode alarm first using an eval block. That will allow your program to continue operation and try the function again. If that doesn't work and you need "non-safe" mode operation, then you must do as little as possible and exit() as soon as possible after the alarm because a low level non-reentrant OS function may have been interrupted.

In reply to Re: Race condition with Mail::Sender::MailMsg? by Marshall
in thread Race condition with Mail::Sender::MailMsg? by DrewP

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