How can I force a bash loop to end if it runs x times in x seconds?

Question

I'm trying to grab batches of input from a remote pipe via ssh. My script below works ok, but I would like to add some sort of check into it so that if something were to go wrong or break the loop would end if the script started running away.

How can I add in a component that would check if the loop ran, say 5 times in 3 seconds then the script would break the loop and auto terminate?

#!/bin/sh
if [ -z "$1" ]
    then
    echo " usage: user@host"
    echo
    exit
fi


while [ 1 ]
    do
    CB=`ssh $1 cat clipboardpipe`
    if [ -n "$CB" ]
        then
        echo $CB | /usr/bin/pbcopy
        echo $CB | /usr/local/bin/growlnotify
    fi
    sleep 1
done

ps: I had looked at using something like tail -f but it didn't seem to work when other programs expect input in batches. All advice is welcome.

pss: clipboardpipe is a named pipe in the home directory on the remote system.

Answer 1

GNU date has nanosecond precision via %N.

every=3     # test every n'th itteration 
bsecs=0.95  # break at secs (float)
bnano=$(printf '%0.9f' "$bsecs"); bnano=${bnano/./};  
# avoid lead '0' octal clash when time slice < 1 sec
shopt -s extglob; bnano=${bnano#+(0)}  

tprev=$(date +%s%N)
for i in {1..24} ;do  # just a test loop

  if ((i%every==1)) ;then
    tnow=$(date +%s%N)
    if ((tnow-tprev>=bnano)) ;then 
        echo "Auto Break!  $every itteratons took longer than $bsecs secs"
        break
    fi
    ((tprev=tnow))
  fi
  # do something, eg sleep for testing
  sleep 1.$i; echo $i
done

Answer 2

If you're on Linux, you can use the timeout command that is provided by the coreutils package.

timeout documentation