How to add a Timeout to Console.ReadLine()?

Question

I have a console app in which I want to give the user x seconds to respond to the prompt. If no input is made after a certain period of time, program logic should

Answer 1

Example implementation of Eric's post above. This particular example was used to read information that was passed to a console app via pipe:

 using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.IO;
using System.Threading;

namespace PipedInfo
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            StreamReader buffer = ReadPipedInfo();

            Console.WriteLine(buffer.ReadToEnd());
        }

        #region ReadPipedInfo
        public static StreamReader ReadPipedInfo()
        {
            //call with a default value of 5 milliseconds
            return ReadPipedInfo(5);
        }

        public static StreamReader ReadPipedInfo(int waitTimeInMilliseconds)
        {
            //allocate the class we're going to callback to
            ReadPipedInfoCallback callbackClass = new ReadPipedInfoCallback();

            //to indicate read complete or timeout
            AutoResetEvent readCompleteEvent = new AutoResetEvent(false);

            //open the StdIn so that we can read against it asynchronously
            Stream stdIn = Console.OpenStandardInput();

            //allocate a one-byte buffer, we're going to read off the stream one byte at a time
            byte[] singleByteBuffer = new byte[1];

            //allocate a list of an arbitary size to store the read bytes
            List byteStorage = new List(4096);

            IAsyncResult asyncRead = null;
            int readLength = 0; //the bytes we have successfully read

            do
            {
                //perform the read and wait until it finishes, unless it's already finished
                asyncRead = stdIn.BeginRead(singleByteBuffer, 0, singleByteBuffer.Length, new AsyncCallback(callbackClass.ReadCallback), readCompleteEvent);
                if (!asyncRead.CompletedSynchronously)
                    readCompleteEvent.WaitOne(waitTimeInMilliseconds);

                //end the async call, one way or another

                //if our read succeeded we store the byte we read
                if (asyncRead.IsCompleted)
                {
                    readLength = stdIn.EndRead(asyncRead);
                    if (readLength > 0)
                        byteStorage.Add(singleByteBuffer[0]);
                }

            } while (asyncRead.IsCompleted && readLength > 0);
            //we keep reading until we fail or read nothing

            //return results, if we read zero bytes the buffer will return empty
            return new StreamReader(new MemoryStream(byteStorage.ToArray(), 0, byteStorage.Count));
        }

        private class ReadPipedInfoCallback
        {
            public void ReadCallback(IAsyncResult asyncResult)
            {
                //pull the user-defined variable and strobe the event, the read finished successfully
                AutoResetEvent readCompleteEvent = asyncResult.AsyncState as AutoResetEvent;
                readCompleteEvent.Set();
            }
        }
        #endregion ReadPipedInfo
    }
}