Time out for external process completion in perl (windows)

Question

I'm writing a perl program for windows, that runs several SVN commands.

I need to receive the status of the SVN process so i'm using "back ticks".

eg:

{
$COMMAND="blabla...";
$results=`$COMMAND 2>&1`;
parse_results($results);
}

Sometimes the process gets stuck, so I need to set timeout to the process.

I tried to use "ALARM" signal but it didn't kill the stuck process. I receive the indication only if and when the process finishes.

What can I do to deal with processes that don't complete fast enough?

Answer 1

Signals are a unix concept. Instead, you should use IPC::Run .

use IPC::Run qw( run timeout );

run [ 'bla', 'arg' ], '>&', \my $results, timeout( 10 )
   or die "bla: $?"