Bail

Bail is a unix style console program that passes stdin straight through until a specified (default 5) number of seconds has passed, in which case it bails out and kills the pipe. It is a time-based rather than a line-based 'head'.

Usage:

Syntax: your_command | bail -s X | your_other_commands

Options:
-s X   : die after X seconds (default 2)
-v     : display version information

License:

GPLv3

Download:

source code - compile with g++