you may try something along this line:
timeout(10) do %x{sleep 12} end
rescue Timeout::Error # Do something to handle the time out. puts "The sleep command timed out" end
Hope that gets you going in a good direction. BenH
Excuse the self reply - something that comes in handy is to capture the exit status of the external application. To do this use $?.exitstatus
%x{echo "Hello World"} puts $?.exitstatus