how to let user abort system() command

[redsss]

I have a command that will take a couple minutes to execute.

I want to do something like this:

system(command) until (done or user_aborted_with_keypress)
quit if done;
do something special if user hit 'N'

Any ideas on the best way to do this?

 

[Stiddy]

print "User, are you sure you wait to wait\n";
print "Type Y for yes or N for no\n";
chomp ($input = <STDIN>);
if ($input eq N){&exit) else ($input eq Y){&run_command};

sub run_command {
system(command);
}

sub exit {
print "Sorry you are so impatient\n";
}









HTH - Stiddy. That should get you on the right track.

 

[stevexff]

Do you want to give them a chance to opt out of executing the command (Stiddy's method) or run it in a separate thread and allow them to cancel execution half way through when they get fed up with waiting (obviously CTRL-C is a simple if rather inelegant option here).

 

[redsss]

Obviously I would want to start executing the process but allow the user to abort the thread if it takes too long, without aborting the parent process.

I figured out I can just spawn a command in the background with system("command &") and then allow them to abort by killing the PID within the script. Thanks.