Implementing a Timeout During Shell Script Data Entry

[Bernd Felsche]

The following seems to work for me:

#!/bin/sh  (or korny, if you have it)

  delay=6
  trap 'trap 14' 14
  echo "What is your Quest? \c"
  (sleep $delay; kill -14 $$ 2>/dev/null)&
  read YourQuest
  kill $! 2>/dev/null
  [ ! -z "$YourQuest" ] && echo "Bah. Humbug. Not interested in $YourQuest" \
  			|| echo "You must be interested in something!"

Hope that does the trick.

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