Mac OS-X does not come with the delightfully useful `timeout` program. Thankfully a rough BASH equivalent can be achieved with only 2 perl statements.

timeout.sh

#
# Mac OS-X does not come with the delightfully useful `timeout` program.  Thankfully a rough BASH equivalent can be achieved with only 2 perl statements.
#
# Originally found on SO: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/601543/command-line-command-to-auto-kill-a-command-after-a-certain-amount-of-time
# 

function timeout() { perl -e 'alarm shift; exec @ARGV' "$@"; }

## Example usage:
# 
# $ function timeout() { perl -e 'alarm shift; exec @ARGV' "$@"; }
#
# $ timeout 1 sleep 2; echo $?
# Alarm clock: 14
# 142
#
# $ timeout 1 sleep 0.5; echo $?
# 0
#
# $ timeout 1 bash -c 'echo "hi" && sleep 2 && echo "bye"'; echo $?
# hi
# Alarm clock: 14
# 142
#
# $ timeout 3 bash -c 'echo "hi" && sleep 2 && echo "bye"'; echo $?
# hi
# bye
# 0
#