Time-limited computation in Ruby

Question

I want to run a task in Ruby for up to (say) 10 seconds, and kill that task if it has taken longer. This is to prevent hanging of an external process. What's the best way of implementing this? In particular, how would I write the function for_up_to_10_seconds below?

loop do
  for_up_to_10_seconds do
    # something
  end
end

Answer 1

The Timeout class from the standard lib is what you're looking for: http://www.ruby-doc.org/core/classes/Timeout.html

loop do
  Timeout.timeout(10) do
    # something
  end
end