I am writing a script that takes a data file and runs an application (spider.exe) to update a database. The problem I’m having is that I don’t know how to kill the application if it runs over a certain amount of time. I am able to start the application using the system command, and I can tell if the application finished processing because it generates an error file. I have also tried using proc::simple, but am having some interesting results. When starting the process, it always returns that the application has not started, yet it did start, and the poll function always returns the application is running even when it is not, and the kill method does not work at all. The server is running W2K, so the alarm function (as I understand from reading other threads) will not work either. I have also looked into IPC::Run, but am not sure if it will work (I could be wrong though) Does anyone have any suggestions on how to kill the application if it runs too long? Thanks

Things I’ve tried:
 system ("start k:\\spider\\spider.exe”); # works - don’t know how to kill application

 
$spiderProc = Proc::Simple->new();
$spiderStatus = $spiderProc->start("k:\\spider\\spider.exe"); 
print ("spider start status: $ spiderStatus"); # returns start failed
$spiderPoll = $spiderProc->poll();
print ("test poll: $spiderPoll"); # returns running
$tempExitStat = $spiderProc->kill(); 
print ("killing: $tempExitStat"); # returns fill failed
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