From: "Ara.T.Howard" <Ara.T.Howard@...>
Date: 2004-02-10T07:14:57+09:00
Subject: timeout w/o timeout.rb



i'm writing some unit tests which do alot of io/select/etc - bad things to mix
with a thread based 'timeout' method...  i've been using this instead:

  # a timeout method which does not fail when io blocks 
  trap 'SIGALRM', 'IGNORE'
  class TimeoutError < StandardError; end
  def timeout n
    begin
      trap('SIGALRM'){throw :timeout, TimeoutError.new}
      cid = nil 
      unless((cid = fork))
        sleep n
        Process.kill 'SIGALRM', Process.ppid 
      else
        thrown = 
          catch(:timeout) do 
            ret = yield
            Process.kill 'SIGKILL', cid 
            ret
          end
        raise thrown if TimeoutError === thrown
      end
    ensure
      trap 'SIGALRM', 'IGNORE'
    end
  end

any massive problems with this (this impl is a mega hack i realize)?

does it seem like some permutation of this might be useful?  something like
Process#timeout perhaps??

-a
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