Windows command line time limit

Question

How might I go about limiting the execution time of a command line program in Windows? I know in Linux there is timeout/timelimit available, but I have been unable to find similar utilities for Windows.

Answer 1

start yourprogram.exe
ping 127.0.0.1 -n 10
taskkill /im yourprogram.exe

If you put this in notepad and save it as .bat it will create a batch file that will do this.

I have used 10 seconds as an example, just tweak to your needs.

Also, if you are using Vista or above you can scrap the ping line and use the much easier timeout command in it's place

timeout /t 10

Answer 2

As I know there seems no such a function exist, but I think it's doable if you make it run as a windows task via Task Scheduler, from there you can set a limitation of execution, the setting named as: Stop the task if it runs longer than:, you can get more detail from here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc722178.aspx

Answer 3

If you can be bothered with using PowerShell: $app = Start-Process -PassThru -FilePath 'notepad' -ArgumentList 'test.txt' will start notepad with an argument of test.txt (you can separate multiple arguments by ,.

Start-Sleep -Seconds 10 will sleep for 10s.

Either $app.Kill() or taskkill /PID $app.Id will kill the started application.

If you prefer a cmd solution that will only call PowerShell to start the process and then store it's PID in a variable: for /F %A in ('powershell -Command "(Start-Process -PassThru -FilePath 'notepad' -ArgumentList 'test.txt').Id"') do set PID=%A (when called from a .bat/.cmd you have to use %%A instead of %A). You can then use @BaliC's methods of timing out and taskkill /PID %PID% to kill the started application.

Answer 4

Solution :

In windows it needs to make three batch files

process.bat

@ECHO OFF
start   /b cm.bat
start  cmd.exe /c run.bat
EXIT

cm.bat

@ECHO OFF
a.exe < input.txt > out.txt
taskkill /im a.exe /f
taskkill /im cmd.exe /f
EXIT

run.bat

@ECHO off
timeout /t 5
taskkill /im a.exe /f 
taskkill /im cmd.exe /f

EXIT

Now Run process.bat . it will start both cm.bat and run.bat simultaneously/parallely. When a.exe from cm.bat terminates; cm.bat kills run.bat and thus it will work as ubuntu timeout.

Answer 5

It's much easier in PowerShell than cmd because there's a Wait-Job cmdlet for this. You can run your app like this

$timeout = 60
$job = sajb { yourprogram.exe }; if (-not ($job | wjb -T $timeout)) { spjb $job }

But it's easier to put it into a function in the profile for reuse by running notepad $PROFILE in PowerShell and paste this snippet

Function Invoke-WithTimeOut {
    Param (
        [int]$timeout,
        [scriptblock]$script
    )
$job = Start-Job $script
$done = $job | Wait-Job -TimeOut $timeout
if (-not $done) { Stop-Job $job }

}

Then you can use it in any PowerShell sessions. For example to run yourprogram.exe with 40s timeout

Invoke-WithTimeOut 40 { yourprogram.exe }

This works even when there are multiple instances of the same app running, unlike the other taskkill solutions. Besides it'll return immediately if the command exits before time out so you don't have to wait the full time

You can replace Start-Job with Start-ThreadJob for better performance but in normal cases they don't make a difference

If cmd is really needed then you can call this from a batch file

powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -C "Invoke-WithTimeOut 40 { yourprogram.exe }"

From Windows 10 (1607+) there's also a native solution

ScriptRunner.exe -appvscript yourprogram "with" "args" -appvscriptrunnerparameters -wait -timeout=60

If you change Start-Job/Start-ThreadJob and Wait-Job to Start-Process and Wait-Process then the result will be the same as the ScriptRunner solution above