NAME

Time::Out - Easily timeout long running operations

SYNOPSIS

use Time::Out ;

timeout 5 => affects {
  # your code goes were
} ;
if ($@){
  # operation timed-out
}

DESCRIPTION

Time::Out provides an easy interface to alarm(2) based timeouts.

EXPORT

Time::Out exports 2 symbols, 'timeout' and 'affects'. However, these should only be used according to the syntax shown above.

RETURN VALUE

'timeout' returns whatever the code placed inside the block returns:

  use Time::Out ;

  my $rc = timeout 5 => affects {
	return 5 ;
  } ;
  # $rc == 5

BUGS

One drawback to using 'timeout' is that it masks @_ in the affected code. This happens because the affected code is actually wrapped inside another subroutine that provides it's own @_. You can get around this by specifically passing your @_ (or whatever you want for that matter) to 'timeout' as such:

use Time::Out ;

sub test {
  timeout 5, @_ => affects {
    print "$_[0]\n" ;
  } ;
}

test("hello") ; # will print "hello\n" ;

SEE ALSO

eval, alarm(2)

AUTHOR

Patrick LeBoutillier, <patl@cpan.org>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Copyright 2005 by Patrick LeBoutillier

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.