How to add a timeout value when using Java's Runtime.exec()?

Question

I have a method I am using to execute a command on the local host. I\'d like to add a timeout parameter to the method so that if the command being called doesn\'t finish in

Answer 1

Following the answer by erickson, I created a more generic way to do the same thing.

public class ProcessWithTimeout extends Thread
{
    private Process m_process;
    private int m_exitCode = Integer.MIN_VALUE;

    public ProcessWithTimeout(Process p_process)
    {
        m_process = p_process;
    }

    public int waitForProcess(int p_timeoutMilliseconds)
    {
        this.start();

        try
        {
            this.join(p_timeoutMilliseconds);
        }
        catch (InterruptedException e)
        {
            this.interrupt();
        }

        return m_exitCode;
    }

    @Override
    public void run()
    {
        try
        { 
            m_exitCode = m_process.waitFor();
        }
        catch (InterruptedException ignore)
        {
            // Do nothing
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            // Unexpected exception
        }
    }
}

Now, all you have to do is as follows:

Process process = Runtime.getRuntime().exec("");
ProcessWithTimeout processWithTimeout = new ProcessWithTimeout(process);
int exitCode = processWithTimeout.waitForProcess(5000);

if (exitCode == Integer.MIN_VALUE)
{
    // Timeout
}
else
{
    // No timeout !
}