I am new to perl and i have a question about perl thread. I am trying to create a new thread to check if the running function is timed out, and my way of doing it is as below. Logic is 1.create a new thread 2.run the main function and see if it is timed out, if ture, kill it Sample code: $exit_tread = false; # a flag to make sure timeout thread will run my $thr_timeout = threads->new( \&timeout ); execute main function here; $exit_thread = true # set the flag to true to force thread ends $thr_timeout->join(); #wait for the timeout thread ends Code of timeout function sub timeout { $timeout = false; my $start_time = time(); while (!$exit_thread) { sleep(1); last if (main function is executed); if (time() - $start_time >= configured time ) { logmsg "process is killed as request timed out"; _kill_remote_process(); $timeout = true; last; } } } now the code is running as i expected, but i am just not very clear if the code $exit_thread = true works because there is a "last" at the end of while loop. Can anybody give me a answer? Thanks