Subject: bug#9102: "timeout 0 FOO" should timeout right away

From: "Alan Curry" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 16 Jul 2011 17:08:44 -0500 (GMT+5)

Paul Eggert writes:
> 
> "sleep 0" sleeps for zero seconds, and "timeout 0 FOO"
> should timeout in zero seconds as well.  Currently,
> it doesn't; it times out in an infinite number of seconds.
> I see why, from the internals (alarm (0) is a special
> call intended to cancel alarms).  However, 'timeout' shouldn't
> be exposing those internals to users; it should behave like
> 'sleep' does, as that's more consistent.
> 

What's the difference between running a command with a 0 second timeout
and not running the command at all? It could be killed before it even gets
scheduled.

-- 
Alan Curry