From: ara.t.howard@...
Date: 2006-11-01T09:35:29+09:00
Subject: Re: Nonblocking IO read

On Wed, 1 Nov 2006 srobertjames@gmail.com wrote:

> I'm running an external command (using popen4 - yes, it is available on
> Windows also). I capture stdout and stderr.  "what will your program do if
> there is no input?" - I assume you mean output - Well, I hope there is no
> stderr output.  If there is, I'd like to capture it and feed it to Logger.
>
> Likewise, if there is a problem, and there's no stdout, then I don't want to
> wait for ever - I want to throw an exception.

so, basically you want to timeout on a read right?  in unix you can just use

   require 'timeout'

   Timeout::timeout(n) do
     Open4.popen4 ...
     ...
     ...
   end

but, this is implimented via a thread so i think the read is going to block
your entire process in windows... you might try it.

-a
-- 
my religion is very simple.  my religion is kindness. -- the dalai lama