Here's a small function I use, taken from the book "Developing Applications
with Objective Caml"
http://caml.inria.fr/pub/docs/oreilly-book/html/book-ora168.html

exception Timeout
let sigalrm_handler = Sys.Signal_handle (fun _ -> raise Timeout)
let timeout (time : int) (f : 'a -> 'b) (arg : 'a) =
   let old_behavior = Sys.signal Sys.sigalrm sigalrm_handler in
   let reset_sigalrm () = ignore (Unix.alarm 0); Sys.set_signal
Sys.sigalrm old_behavior in
   ignore (Unix.alarm time) ;
   let res = f arg in reset_sigalrm () ; res


On Mon, Apr 20, 2015 at 8:18 PM, Rodolphe Lepigre <
rodolphe.lepigre@univ-savoie.fr> wrote:

> I was wondering: is there a standard way to stop a computation after, say,
> a given number of milliseconds (or seconds) in OCaml?
>
> For instance I would like to have a function
>
>   exception Timeout
>   val exec : int -> ('a -> 'b) -> 'a -> 'b
>
> such that [exec t f x] computes [f x] but raises [Timeout] in case the
> computation did not end before [t] milliseconds (or seconds).
>
> My guess would be that I need to use some Unix signals magic. Has anyone
> come up with a clean solution to this problem?
>
> Thanks!
>
> Rodolphe
> --
> Rodolphe Lepigre
> LAMA, Université de Savoie, FRANCE
> http://lama.univ-savoie.fr/~lepigre/
>
> --
> Caml-list mailing list.  Subscription management and archives:
> https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list
> Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners
> Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs
>