powershell does not stop program after timeout

Question

Want to make windows equivalent for GNU timeout (as a oneliner to embed into batch script) to start program and terminate it if this doea on terminate itself after timeout.

powershell.exe "Start-Process 'ping.exe' -ArgumentList '127.0.0.1', '-t' -NoNewWindow -PassThru | % { $_.WaitForExit(3000) }; If(!$?) { $_.Kill() }"

It only print FALSE after timeout, but ping program continue. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

$? holds the error status for the last command invocation, and $_.WaitForExit(3000) is not a command.

As evident from the ouput you receive, the WaitForExit() method returns $false if the target process didn't exit before the timeout was exceeded, so you'll want to inspect that value instead:

... |% { if(-not $_.WaitForExit(3000)) { $_.Kill() } }