Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!n8emr!uncle!donlash
From: donlash@uncle.uucp (Donald Lashomb)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Timeout on shell command.
Message-ID: <1990Aug12.221658.27776@uncle.uucp>
Date: 12 Aug 90 22:16:58 GMT
References: <BRISTER.90Aug10222433@westworld.decwrl.dec.com>
Reply-To: donlash@uncle.UUCP (Donald Lashomb)
Organization: U.N.C.L.E.
Lines: 24

In article <BRISTER.90Aug10222433@westworld.decwrl.dec.com> brister@decwrl.dec.com (James Brister) writes:
>I'd like to have a shell script run a command, but if that command doesn't
>finish in X seconds, then the script should kill it, if the command
>finishes sooner then the script should immediately continue. Any ideas on
>how one could achieve this?

I'd approach it like this-

#!/bin/sh
#
#  run the command in the background
#  remember its process ID
#  sleep for X seconds
#  kill the background command --- note: if
#  the background command is finished, then
#  the kill will fail benignly.
#
command &
cmdpid=$!
sleep $X
kill $cmdpid

hope this helps
-Don