How to timeout PowerShell function call

Question

I wrote a little powershell function that executes Get-EventLog against remote servers. On some servers this seems to just hang and never times out. Can I timeout a powershell function call? I see how to do this against a different process, but i want to do this for a power shell function.

thanks

#######################
function Get-Alert4
{
    param($computer)
    $ret = Get-EventLog application -after (get-date).addHours(-2) -computer $computer | select-string -inputobject{$_.message} -pattern "Some Error String" | select-object List
    return $ret   
} #

Answer 1

You can implement timeouts by using a background job like so:

function Get-Alert4($computer, $timeout = 30)
{
  $time = (Get-Date).AddHours(-2)
  $job = Start-Job { param($c) Get-EventLog Application -CN $c -After $time | 
                     Select-String "Some err string" -inputobject{$_.message} |
                     Select-Object List } -ArgumentList $computer

  Wait-Job $job -Timeout $timeout
  Stop-Job $job 
  Receive-Job $job
  Remove-Job $job
}