How to limit the running time of a program?

Question

Sometimes when I write code I found that I made a stupid mistake and some loop takes almost all CPU time forever. Is there a way the running time of a program for example to 10 seconds in bash?

score 7 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 04 '15 at 15:40

7

The timeout command will do this for you, i.e.

timeout 10s command

It will kill command after 10 seconds. Instead of s for seconds, you can also use m for minutes, h for hours or d for days.

answered Apr 04 '15 at 15:40

marinus

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One just has to love the BUGS section of man timeout: "Some platforms don't curently support timeouts beyond 2038" – Hagen von Eitzen Apr 04 '15 at 18:36

How to limit the running time of a program?

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