Hi Honza.

Quote:

There is no need for an invisible window. Just remember the pid returned from fork and call kill on it after the timeout is exceeded. In GUI apps, you can do this easily using SetTimeCallback().

Technically, you're right, but getting GUIs and the old terminal based linuxes is not so straight forward.

For example how could you get the PID without "waitpid()" or reading a return string from a system() call.

The calling app would hang so you'd never get a chance to shut it down.

A system call to an intermediate shell utility similar to kshell<N> is a much better alternative for a simple dialog bell of some sort.

Either it runs or it doesn't.