NAME

       Time::Out - Easily timeout long running operations

SYNOPSIS

         use Time::Out qw( timeout );

         timeout $timeout => sub {
           # your operation is implemented here and will be interrupted
           # if it runs for more than $timeout seconds
         };
         if ( $@ ) {
           # operation timed-out
         }

DESCRIPTION

       The "Time::Out" module provides an easy interface to alarm(2) based timeouts.  Nested
       timeouts are supported. The module exports the "timeout()" function by default. The
       function returns whatever the code placed inside the subroutine reference returns:

         use Time::Out qw( timeout );

         my $result = timeout 5 => sub {
           return 7;
         };
         # $result == 7

       If "Time::Out" sees that Time::HiRes has been loaded, it will use that "alarm()" function
       (if available) instead of the default one, allowing float timeout values to be used
       effectively:

         use Time::HiRes qw();
         use Time::Out   qw( timeout );

         timeout 3.1416 => sub {
           # ...
         };

CAVEATS

       Blocking I/O on MSWin32
         alarm(2) doesn't interrupt blocking I/O on MSWin32, so "timeout()" won't do that either.

       @_
         One drawback to using "timeout()" is that it masks @_ in the affected code.  This
         happens because the affected code is actually wrapped inside another subroutine that
         provides it's own @_. You can get around this by specifically passing your @_ (or
         whatever you want for that matter) to "timeout()" as such:

           use Time::Out qw( timeout );

           sub foo {
             timeout 5, @_ => sub {
               @_;
             };
           }
           my @result = foo( 42, "Hello, World!" );
           # @result == ( 42, "Hello, World!" );

       Eval inside timeout
         If the affected code has its own exception handling using Try::Tiny for example, the
         catch block has to be amended in a way so that it will rethrow an exception, if it
         refers to a timeout:

           use Scalar::Util qw( blessed  );
           use Time::Out    qw( timeout );
           use Try::Tiny    qw( catch try );

           timeout 5, sub {
             try {
               select( undef, undef, undef, 7 );
               die "bad\n";
             } catch {
               # rethrow exception, if it refers to a timeout
               die $_ if blessed $_ && $_->isa( 'Time::Out::Exception' );
               # handle all other exceptions
             }
           };

SEE ALSO

       alarm(2), Sys::AlarmCall

AUTHORS

       Sven Willenbuecher, <sven.willenbuecher@gmx.de>

       Patrick LeBoutillier, <patl@cpan.org>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

       This software is copyright (c) 2005-2008 Patrick LeBoutillier, 2023 by Sven Willenbuecher.

       This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as
       the Perl 5 programming language system itself.