Linux commands - abort operation with timeout

Question

I'm writing a script and at some point I call to "command1" which does not stop until it CTRL+C is invoked.

1. Is there a way to state a timeout for a command? Like: command1 arguments -timeout 10
2. How do I write a CTRL+C command in textual form?

Thx!

Answer 1

You can use the timeout command from GNU coreutils (you may need to install it first, but it comes in most, if not all, Linux distributions):

timeout [OPTION] DURATION COMMAND [ARG]...

For instance:

timeout 5 ./test.sh

will terminate the script after 5 seconds of execution. If you want to send a KILL signal (instead of TERM), use -kflag.

Here you have the full description of the timeout command.