End of Life Ruby 3.2 has reached end of life and gets no more fixes. Switch to Ruby 4.0 →

instance method · added in Ruby 3.2

IO#timeout=

timeout = duration → duration

timeout = nil → nil

VALUE
rb_io_set_timeout(VALUE self, VALUE timeout)
{
    // Validate it:
    if (RTEST(timeout)) {
        rb_time_interval(timeout);
    }

    rb_io_t *fptr = rb_io_get_fptr(self);

    fptr->timeout = timeout;

    return self;
}

Set the internal timeout to the specified duration or nil. The timeout applies to all blocking operations where possible.

This affects the following methods (but is not limited to): gets, puts, read, write, wait_readable and wait_writable. This also affects blocking socket operations like Socket#accept and Socket#connect.

Some operations like File#open and IO#close are not affected by the timeout. A timeout during a write operation may leave the IO in an inconsistent state, e.g. data was partially written. Generally speaking, a timeout is a last ditch effort to prevent an application from hanging on slow I/O operations, such as those that occur during a slowloris attack.

Ruby version changes

3.2
- Introduce IO#timeout= and IO#timeout which can cause IO::TimeoutError to be raised if a blocking operation exceeds the specified timeout. [Feature #18630]
  
  Example
```
STDIN.timeout = 1
STDIN.read # => Blocking operation timed out! (IO::TimeoutError)
```

See also #timeout #to_i #tell #to_io also in 4.1 · 4.0 · 3.4 · 3.3

‹ prev#timeout next ›#to_i