Help: If this code doesn't finish in 3 seconds then abort and do something else. HOW?

[JonBlockBoston]

I'm trying to execute a portion of code within a specific number of seconds. If it fails, I need to break out and do something else. To give you an idea of what I mean, take a look at the pseudo code below:

---

try to complete the code below for 3 seconds {

do something that could take a long time. if it doesn't complete within 3 seconds, generate an error which will abort the processing of further instructions in this try

} catch (Exception $e) {

Execute some different commands since the code above didn't finish quickly enough.

}

Thank you for any help you can provide.

-Jon

[NogDog]

If you are doing something in a loop, you could check the current time on each iteration, throwing an exception if the time is more than 3 seconds since the time it started. Other than that, I can't think of anything unless you happen to call one of the few PHP functions that has a timeout argument.