itCbitC

One way is to schedule an alarm signal (SIGALRM) to be sent to the process after a number of seconds have elapsed, given as an argument to alarm().
Write a signal handler that sets a flag upon receipt of SIGALRM; check the value of flag in the caller to decide whether to continue or exit the program.

Elysia

We're talking platform-specific solutions here, though. Correct me if I'm wrong.
I don't believe there's any standard way of doing it, so the question becomes: for what OS?

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alekbabich

I am running Windows XP, but why is it platform specific?

Elysia

There are many things C can do natively, that is with code in its standard library.
However, there is also a lot of things that it cannot do natively, simply because there is no standard pre-existing code that does this.
That is when we must turn to code that exists on operating systems that can do this for us.

__________________
Using: Microsoft Windows™ 7 Professional (x64), Microsoft Visual Studio™ 2008 Team System
I dedicated my life to helping others. This is only a small sample of what they said:
"Thanks Elysia. You're a programming master! How the hell do you know every thing?"
Quoted... at least once.