Thread: How to control the time that a function takes to execute in a loop?

Im doing a program that open up a folder, makes a list of all the files in a folder, then processes each file one by one in a loop.
the problem is that some of the files are not in the proper format for the parser and it just get stuck at some point because of a bug. I cannot do anything about the parser. But what I wanted to do a code that lets me try to process the file for some time period and if after that its not done. skip it and go to the next file. im not that used to java and dont know where to start. Thank you all in advance

I wanted to do a code that lets me try to process the file for some time period and if after that its not done. skip it

One way would be in the method to save the starting time using: System.currentTimeMillis() and then test the time used at selected points in the method/loop by getting the current time and computing the time used and exiting the code if too much time was used.

Im using junit to run the test. I added the timeout but when the loops get a file that get stuck when the time limit its over it stop the test and just dont continue to the next file. Any ideas about that??

when the time limit its over it stop the test

No ideas without seeing the code. Here is how I thought it could be done:

begin outer loop
  get file to process
  save starting time
  begin inner loop
    if (time used up) //  duration = current time - starting time
       break out of inner loop
    do some processing
  end inner loop
  finish up as needed
end outer loop