I understand this, but the manpage and the help file do not explain the functionally this way. The manpage suggests that the following should work:

$ timeout -k 10s sleep 10

It does not because the first argument after -k MUST be the an integer value of the signal you want to send, not the duration that the manpage and --help tell you to pass.

Regards, 

B



On Apr 6, 2024, at 4:06 AM, Andreas Schwab <schwab@linux-m68k.org> wrote:

On Apr 05 2024, "Branden R. Williams" via GNU coreutils Bug Reports wrote:

That’s not an accurate representation of what the command actually does. The argument after -k MUST be the kill signal code, without the code the command fails. The manpage and help document agree with what you are saying but the execution of the program fails.

$ timeout -k USR1 1s sleep 10
timeout: invalid time interval ‘USR1’
Try 'timeout --help' for more information.
$ timeout -s KILL 1s sleep 10
Killed

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