Executing a function with a timeout

Question

What would be an idiomatic way of executing a function within a time limit? Something like,

(with-timeout 5000
 (do-somthing))

Unless do-so

Answer 1

I think you can do this reasonably reliably by using the timeout capability within futures:

  (defmacro with-timeout [millis & body]
    `(let [future# (future ~@body)]
      (try
        (.get future# ~millis java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit/MILLISECONDS)
        (catch java.util.concurrent.TimeoutException x# 
          (do
            (future-cancel future#)
            nil)))))

A bit of experimenting verified that you need to do a future-cancel to stop the future thread from continuing to execute....