Bash: Terminate on Timeout/File Overflow while Executing Command

Question

I\'m writing a mock-grading script in bash. It\'s supposed to execute a C program which will give some output (which I redirect to a file.) I\'m trying to (1) make it timeout af

Answer 1

There's a GNU coreutil command timeout to do timeouts.

Investigate ulimit -f 32 to set the maximum file size (to 16 KiB; it counts in 512 byte blocks).

Objection:

ulimit is [not] suitable because I have to create other files as well. I need to limit only one of them.

Counter: Unless the program must create a big file and a little file and you have to limit just the little file, you can use a sub-shell to good effect:

(
ulimit -f 32
timeout 10m -- command arg >file
)

The limit on file size is restricted to the commands in the sub-shell (which is marked by the pair of parentheses).