Process hanging -SIGALRM not delivered- Perl - perl

Question

I have a command that I'm executing using OPEN with pipe, and I want to set a timeout of 10 seconds and have the sub process aborted if the execution time exceeds this. However, my code just causes the program to hang- Why is my ALARM not getting delivered properly?
my $pid = 0;
my $cmd = "someCommand";
print "Running Command # $num";
eval {
local $SIG{ALRM} = sub {
print "alarm \n";
kill 9, $pid;
};
alarm 10;
pid = open(my $fh, "$cmd|");
alarm 0;
};
if($#) {
die unless $# eq "alarm \n";
} else {
print $_ while(<$fh>);
}
EDIT:
So From the answers below, This is what I have:
my $pid = open(my $fh, qq(perl -e 'alarm 10; exec \#ARGV; die "exec: $!\n" ' $cmd |));
print $_ while(<$fh>);
But this print ALARM CLOCK to the console when the alarm times out...whereas I dont specify this anywhere in the code...how can I get rid of this, and where would I put the custom alarm event handler?
Thanks!

Answer 1

I want to set a timeout of 10seconds and have the sub process aborted if the execution time exceeds this
A different approach is to set the alarm on the subprocess itself, with a handy scripting language you already have:
my $cmd = "someCommand";
my $pid = open(my $child_stdout, '-|',
'perl', '-e', 'alarm 10; exec #ARGV; die "exec: $!"', $cmd);
...
Your child process will initially be perl (well, the shell and then perl), which will set an alarm on itself and then exec (replace itself with) $someCommand. Pending alarms, however, are inherited across exec()s.

Answer 2

All your code is doing is setting a 10 second timeout on the open call, not on the whole external program. You want to bring the rest of your interaction with the external command into the eval block:
eval {
local $SIG{ALRM} = sub {
print "alarm \n";
kill 9, $pid;
};
alarm 10;
$pid = open(my $fh, "$cmd|");
print while <$fh>;
close $fh;
alarm 0;
};
if($#) {
die unless $# eq "alarm \n";
}