Yesterday I had to write some app that reads files located on some remote computer.
As I knew already this ins’t such a good practice, because your code can just hang/freeze for seconds waiting for that UNC path to become available or just checking it’s existence.

Still, I had to provide some quick solution and “hoping for the best” wasn’t good enough.
So, this is what I came up with.

        public static T Limex<T>(Func<T> F, int Timeout, out bool Completed)
        {
            T result = default(T);
            Thread thread = new Thread(() => result = F());
            thread.Start();
            Completed = thread.Join(Timeout);
            if (!Completed) thread.Abort();
            return result;
        }

        // Overloaded method, for cases when we don't
        // need to know if the method was terminated
        public static T Limex<T>(Func<T> F, int Timeout)
        {
            bool Completed;
            return Limex(F, Timeout, out Completed);
        }

The usage is very simple, just pass any method (declared or anonymous) and the desired Timeout in milliseconds to the Limex.

Example :

bool Completed;
string Content = Limex(() => File.ReadAllText(@"\\unc\dir\file.ext")
                       ,100 // milliseconds
                       ,out Completed);

if (Completed)
   // Do something
else
  // Do something else

Comments and suggestions for improvement are welcome and will be gratefully appreciated