From: "Jesús Gabriel y Galán" <jgabrielygalan@...>
Date: 2010-03-26T18:55:14+09:00
Subject: Re: user input timeout.

On Fri, Mar 26, 2010 at 10:17 AM, Rico Knoop <jointgek@gmail.com> wrote:
> i'v bin programming for about 2 week now and just about completed
> http://pine.fm/LearnToProgram/
>
> but for a change of pace i started something of my own but i cant seem
> to get my program to wait X-seconds for user input.
>
> basicly what i got is:
>
> input= "empty"
> input= gets.chomp
>
> if input == "empty"
>  puts "no input"
> else
>  puts input
> end
>
> all i want it to do is wait like 10 seconds and if there has bin no user
> input it should just continue with input= "empty"
>
> i feel like i'm missing something real simple

Timeout is in the standard lib:

require 'timeout'

begin
        answer = Timeout::timeout(5) do
                gets
        end
rescue Timeout::Error
        answer = "empty"
end

puts answer

Jesus.