Is there a way to limit the number of output files of a process?

An application of our company uses pdfimages (from xpdf) to check whether some pages in a PDF files, on which we know there is no text, consist of one image.

For this we run pdfimages on that page and count whether only one, two or more, or zero output files have been created (could be JPG, PPM, PGM or PPM).

The problem is that for some PDF files, we get mil开发者_如何学运维lions of 14-byte PPM images, and the process has to be killed manually.

We know that by assigning the process to a job we can restrict how much time the process will run for. But it would probably be better if we could control that the process will create new files at most twice during its execution.

Do you have any clue for doing that?

Thank you.

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One approach is to monitor the directory for file creations: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa365261(v=vs.85).aspx - the monitoring app could then terminate the PDF image extraction process.

Another would be to use a simple ramdisk which limited the number of files that could be created: you might modify something like http://support.microsoft.com/kb/257405.

If you can set up a FAT16 filesystem, I think there's a limit of 128 files in the root directory, 512 in other dirs? - with such small files that would be reached quickly.

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Also, aside from my 'joke' comment, you might want to check out _setmaxstdio and see if that helps ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/6e3b887c(VS.71).aspx ).