Why would this work
timeout 10s echo "foo bar" # foo bar
but this wouldn't
function echoFooBar {
echo "foo bar"
}
echoFooBar # foo bar
timeout 10s echoFooBar # timeout: failed to run command `echoFooBar': No such file or directory
and how can I make it work?
timeout
is a command - so it is executing in a subprocess of your bash shell. Therefore it has no access to your functions defined in your current shell.
The command timeout
is given is executed as a subprocess of timeout - a grand-child process of your shell.
You might be confused because echo
is both a shell built-in and a separate command.
What you can do is put your function in it's own script file, chmod it to be executable, then execute it with timeout
.
Alternatively fork, executing your function in a sub-shell - and in the original process, monitor the progress, killing the subprocess if it takes too long.
As Douglas Leeder said you need a separate process for timeout to signal to. Workaround by exporting function to subshells and running subshell manually.
export -f echoFooBar
timeout 10s bash -c echoFooBar
There's an inline alternative also launching a subprocess of bash shell:
timeout 10s bash <<EOT
function echoFooBar {
echo foo
}
echoFooBar
sleep 20
EOT
You can create a function which would allow you to do the same as timeout but also for other functions:
function run_cmd {
cmd="$1"; timeout="$2";
grep -qP '^\d+$' <<< $timeout || timeout=10
(
eval "$cmd" &
child=$!
trap -- "" SIGTERM
(
sleep $timeout
kill $child 2> /dev/null
) &
wait $child
)
}
And could run as below:
run_cmd "echoFooBar" 10
Note: The solution came from one of my questions:
Elegant solution to implement timeout for bash commands and functions
if you just want to add timeout as an additional option for the entire existing script, you can make it test for the timeout-option, and then make it call it self recursively without that option.
example.sh:
#!/bin/bash
if [ "$1" == "-t" ]; then
timeout 1m $0 $2
else
#the original script
echo $1
sleep 2m
echo YAWN...
fi
running this script without timeout:
$./example.sh -other_option # -other_option
# YAWN...
running it with a one minute timeout:
$./example.sh -t -other_option # -other_option
function foo(){
for i in {1..100};
do
echo $i;
sleep 1;
done;
}
cat <( foo ) # Will work
timeout 3 cat <( foo ) # Will Work
timeout 3 cat <( foo ) | sort # Wont work, As sort will fail
cat <( timeout 3 cat <( foo ) ) | sort -r # Will Work
This function uses only builtins
Maybe consider evaling "$*" instead of running $@ directly depending on your needs
It starts a job with the command string specified after the first arg that is the timeout value and monitors the job pid
It checks every 1 seconds, bash supports timeouts down to 0.01 so that can be tweaked
Also if your script needs stdin, read
should rely on a dedicated fd (exec {tofd}<> <(:)
)
Also you might want to tweak the kill signal (the one inside the loop) which is default to -15
, you might want -9
## forking is evil
timeout() {
to=$1; shift
$@ & local wp=$! start=0
while kill -0 $wp; do
read -t 1
start=$((start+1))
if [ $start -ge $to ]; then
kill $wp && break
fi
done
}