This is REALLY got me stumped..

I'm trying to run a simple bash command for N seconds then force it to kill/stop/halt.

The command is:

What this does is throw a BUNCH of NMEA strings from my GPS receiver into the nmea.data text file. The problem is I have to manually stop this command with ^C or it will literally run forever. I simply want this command to run for about 3 to 5 seconds then stop on its own.

How can I alter my command to make it do this? I'd prefer to have this as a 'one-liner', but if need be I can create a bash script.

Please help! Thanks!

This should work:

Sweet beans! Works brilliantly!

Thanks a million, man!

Ok - additional request:

Is there any way to daemonize this? I've tried adding another '&' to the very end (after $!) but this didn't do it.

The reason I ask is I'm making a script that uses this command, and the script 'hangs' for the duration of the command. I'd like to be able to run the command and have my script continue on without waiting for the command to finish.

Thanks!

Strange, it works for me. Did you get any error? Anyway, you can take into account the option -n for gpspipe:
guess how many sentences are sent in 3 seconds and specify the count parameter accordingly.

You're a genius, colucix! The -n option did the trick! Too bad I didn't know about it earlier..

Anyways, this is the command I'm using now which works perfectly (ven daemonizes):

15 seems to last about 3 seconds.

This would work too: