From: "Michael W. Ryder" <_mwryder@...>
Date: 2006-12-18T08:55:10+09:00
Subject: Question regarding threads and I/O

I am a veteran programmer but still am trying to learn Ruby.  In the 
language I have been using for over 25 years input has an option to 
terminate after x number of seconds, something that seems to be missing 
in Ruby.  I use this ability to log off sessions when the user leaves 
the computer for a time along with other purposes.
Is it possible in Ruby to use two threads for input, one for reading 
from the selected source and the second that would terminate the first 
thread if it hadn't completed in the specified amount of time?  The main 
program would start the first thread and feed the PID to the second 
thread along with the number of seconds, or milliseconds, to sleep.  The 
second thread would then see if the first thread is still alive when it 
wakes up and if so terminate it.  Either way the second thread would 
exit after the number of seconds given.