It seems that for this specific problem you should be able to use IO::Select ( which uses select ( the 3 or 4 arg version ) ). It would go a little something like this:
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use IO::Select;
my $timeout = '10'; # We'll wait for up to 10 seconds for input.
my @pslist;
my $pid = open(my $shell, " ssh -2 $user\@ $peer ./pslist | ")
|| die "Remote process list gathering error:\n$!.\n";
my $select = IO::Select->new($shell);
my $handle;
while($handle = $select->can_read($timeout)){
chomp($_ = <$shell>);
last unless $_;
push(@pslist, $_);
}
close($shell);
unless ($handle) {abort();}
foreach (@service){
# .. check the existence of a process
}
I tried to swear at perl and it compiled!