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

Please don't hate me for adding another solution to the plethora of existing answers! This works for Console.ReadKey(), but could easily be modified to work with ReadLine(), etc.

As the "Console.Read" methods are blocking, it's necessary to "nudge" the StdIn stream to cancel the read.

Calling syntax:

ConsoleKeyInfo keyInfo;
bool keyPressed = AsyncConsole.ReadKey(500, out keyInfo);
// where 500 is the timeout

Code:

public class AsyncConsole // not thread safe
{
    private static readonly Lazy Instance =
        new Lazy();

    private bool _keyPressed;
    private ConsoleKeyInfo _keyInfo;

    private bool DoReadKey(
        int millisecondsTimeout,
        out ConsoleKeyInfo keyInfo)
    {
        _keyPressed = false;
        _keyInfo = new ConsoleKeyInfo();

        Thread readKeyThread = new Thread(ReadKeyThread);
        readKeyThread.IsBackground = false;
        readKeyThread.Start();

        Thread.Sleep(millisecondsTimeout);

        if (readKeyThread.IsAlive)
        {
            try
            {
                IntPtr stdin = GetStdHandle(StdHandle.StdIn);
                CloseHandle(stdin);
                readKeyThread.Join();
            }
            catch { }
        }

        readKeyThread = null;

        keyInfo = _keyInfo;
        return _keyPressed;
    }

    private void ReadKeyThread()
    {
        try
        {
            _keyInfo = Console.ReadKey();
            _keyPressed = true;
        }
        catch (InvalidOperationException) { }
    }

    public static bool ReadKey(
        int millisecondsTimeout,
        out ConsoleKeyInfo keyInfo)
    {
        return Instance.Value.DoReadKey(millisecondsTimeout, out keyInfo);
    }

    private enum StdHandle { StdIn = -10, StdOut = -11, StdErr = -12 };

    [DllImport("kernel32.dll")]
    private static extern IntPtr GetStdHandle(StdHandle std);

    [DllImport("kernel32.dll")]
    private static extern bool CloseHandle(IntPtr hdl);
}