Windows command line time limit

Question

How might I go about limiting the execution time of a command line program in windows? I know in linux there is timeout/timelimit available, but I have been unable to find similar utilities for windows.

Answer 1

start yourprogram.exe
ping 127.0.0.1 -n 10
taskkill /im yourprogram.exe

If you put this in notepad and save it as .bat it will create a batch file that will do this.

I have used 10 seconds as an example, just tweak to your needs.

Also, if you are using Vista or above you can scrap the ping line and use the much easier timeout command in it's place

timeout /t 10

Answer 2

As I know there seems no such a function exist, but I think it's doable if you make it run as a windows task via Task Scheduler, from there you can set a limitation of execution, the setting named as: Stop the task if it runs longer than:, you can get more detail from here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc722178.aspx

Answer 3

If you can be bothered with using PowerShell: $app = Start-Process -PassThru -FilePath 'notepad' -ArgumentList 'test.txt' will start notepad with an argument of test.txt (you can separate multiple arguments by ,.

Start-Sleep -Seconds 10 will sleep for 10s.

Either $app.Kill() or taskkill /PID $app.Id will kill the started application.

If you prefer a cmd solution that will only call PowerShell to start the process and then store it's PID in a variable: for /F %A in ('powershell -Command "(Start-Process -PassThru -FilePath 'notepad' -ArgumentList 'test.txt').Id"') do set PID=%A (when called from a .bat/.cmd you have to use %%A instead of %A). You can then use @BaliC's methods of timing out and taskkill /PID %PID% to kill the started application.