Dear all,

I often need to execute functions repeatedly (thousands or more times).
While doing so, I encounter two types of problems:

1.) In some models, the estimation process fails due to convergence problems
2.) Some models will run forever.

My solution to #1 is to use tryCatch around the function call so that my
script does not stop if one of the models will raise an error. This works
fine.

Nowever, with regard to #2, I am lost. I would like to set a maximum time
limit (say, 1 minute) and if my procedure is still running then, I would
like to move on to the next model.
I guess a brute-force solution would be to start a new R process for each
model from my R script and to kill the process using system commands after a
given time. However, restarting the R interpreter each time sounds very
inelegant. Are there any versions that work within a single script? Or
alternative suggestions?

Note that mostly these functions are not written by me and not R code (like
nlme for example), so it is not feasible to adapt the function itself.
Rather, it needs to be a wrapper around the function, similar to tryCatch.

Any help appreciated!
Kind regards,
  Lukas

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