http://www.perlmonks.org?node_id=964580


in reply to trying to get timeout to work

T'is easier with a thread, See Re: Backticks and SIGALRM.

Ignore this:


With the rise and rise of 'Social' network sites: 'Computers are making people easier to use everyday'
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.

The start of some sanity?

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Re^2: trying to get timeout to work (easier with threads)
by Skeeve (Parson) on Apr 11, 2012 at 20:51 UTC

    That sounds promising. I will have to check threads and threads::shared as I in fact need (or wanted) to:

    1. Run several system commands in parallel
    2. Store the results in an sqlite DB
    3. Time out if a command runs too long

    As it seemed to be not too easy to get the data from the parallel commands back to the parent, so that I just have one writer to the sqlite DB, I skipped this part for now and concentrated on the timeout part.

    It seems with threads::shared, I can achieve what I wanted in the first place. Thanks BrowserUk!


    s$$([},&%#}/&/]+}%&{})*;#$&&s&&$^X.($'^"%]=\&(|?*{%
    +.+=%;.#_}\&"^"-+%*).}%:##%}={~=~:.")&e&&s""`$''`"e

      Here's an improved version.

      • The old version always waited for at least the timeout period, even if the command completed early.

        This one returns as soon as the external command terminates.

      • The old version returned nothing if the process timed out.

        This version will return as much as was available before the process was killed.

      • It also addresses a potential "Uninitialised" warning if the system is heavily loaded and the thread takes a while to start.

        If the thread or process was slow starting due to system load or other factors, the old version could try to use $pid before it was set. This corrects that error.

      #! 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"; push @results, $_ while <$fh>; }->detach; sleep 1 until $pid; sleep 1 while kill 0, $pid and $TIMEOUT--; kill 3, $pid and warn 'Command timed out' if $TIMEOUT; print "command return \n'@results'"; __END__ C:\test>timeoutcmd -N=1 command return '1 ' C:\test>timeoutcmd -N=10 command return '1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ' C:\test>timeoutcmd -N=11 Command timed out at C:\test\timeoutcmd.pl line 21. command return '1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 '

      With the rise and rise of 'Social' network sites: 'Computers are making people easier to use everyday'
      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.

      The start of some sanity?