I have the following loop:
$output = (command)
do {
something
} while ($output -match "some string")
Which works fine. I want to add a timeout to the loop, how do I do that? The expectation is that at some point the output won't match the string but I don't want it to run forever if the output matches the string forever.
Just use the Get-Date cmdlet and check for that in your while condition. Example:
$startDate = Get-Date
$output = (command)
do {
something
} while ($output -match "some string" -and $startDate.AddMinutes(2) -gt (Get-Date))
$output stays the same in the original example, due to nothing ever being assigned to it inside the do{}while() loop
Although using the Get-Date Cmdlet is valid, a cleaner approach would be to use the System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch class, which is available in .NET Core >= 1.0.
$timeout = New-TimeSpan -Seconds 5
$stopwatch = [System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch]::StartNew()
do {
# do stuff here
} while ($stopwatch.elapsed -lt $timeout)
Sources:
