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'.
Syntax: your_command | bail -s X | your_other_commands Options: -s X : die after X seconds (default 2) -v : display version information
GPLv3
source code - compile with g++