Waitpid equivalent with timeout?

Question

Imagine I have a process that starts several child processes. The parent needs to know when a child exits.

I can use waitpid, but then if/when the paren

Answer 1

Fork an intermediate child, which forks the real child and a timeout process and waits for all (both) of its children. When one exits, it'll kill the other one and exit.

pid_t intermediate_pid = fork();
if (intermediate_pid == 0) {
    pid_t worker_pid = fork();
    if (worker_pid == 0) {
        do_work();
        _exit(0);
    }

    pid_t timeout_pid = fork();
    if (timeout_pid == 0) {
        sleep(timeout_time);
        _exit(0);
    }

    pid_t exited_pid = wait(NULL);
    if (exited_pid == worker_pid) {
        kill(timeout_pid, SIGKILL);
    } else {
        kill(worker_pid, SIGKILL); // Or something less violent if you prefer
    }
    wait(NULL); // Collect the other process
    _exit(0); // Or some more informative status
}
waitpid(intermediate_pid, 0, 0);

Surprisingly simple :)

You can even leave out the intermediate child if you're sure no other module in the program is spwaning child processes of its own.