Timeout command on Mac OS X?

Another simple approach that works pretty much cross platform (because it uses perl which is nearly everywhere) is this:

function timeout() { perl -e 'alarm shift; exec @ARGV' "$@"; }

Snagged from here: https://gist.github.com/jaytaylor/6527607

Instead of putting it in a function, you can just put the following line in a script, and it'll work too:

timeout.sh

perl -e 'alarm shift; exec @ARGV' "$@";

or a version that has built in help/examples:

timeout.sh

#!/usr/bin/env bash

function show_help()
{
  IT=$(cat <<EOF

Runs a command, and times out if it doesnt complete in time

Example usage:
 
   # Will fail after 1 second, and shows non zero exit code result
   $ timeout 1 "sleep 2" 2> /dev/null ; echo \$?
   142

   # Will succeed, and return exit code of 0.
   $ timeout 1 sleep 0.5; echo \$?
   0

   $ timeout 1 bash -c 'echo "hi" && sleep 2 && echo "bye"' 2> /dev/null; echo \$?
   hi
   142

   $ timeout 3 bash -c 'echo "hi" && sleep 2 && echo "bye"' 2> /dev/null; echo \$?
   hi
   bye
   0
EOF
)
  echo "$IT"
  exit
}

if [ "$1" == "help" ]
then
  show_help
fi
if [ -z "$1" ]
then
  show_help
fi

#
# Mac OS-X does not come with the delightfully useful `timeout` program.  Thankfully a rough BASH equivalent can be achieved with only 2 perl statements.
#
# Originally found on SO: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/601543/command-line-command-to-auto-kill-a-command-after-a-certain-amount-of-time
# 
perl -e 'alarm shift; exec @ARGV' "$@";

You can use

brew install coreutils

And then whenever you need timeout, use

gtimeout

..instead. To explain why here's a snippet from the Homebrew Caveats section:

Caveats

All commands have been installed with the prefix 'g'.

If you really need to use these commands with their normal names, you can add a "gnubin" directory to your PATH from your bashrc like:

PATH="/usr/local/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnubin:$PATH"

Additionally, you can access their man pages with normal names if you add the "gnuman" directory to your MANPATH from your bashrc as well:

MANPATH="/usr/local/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnuman:$MANPATH"