Here is one of those little spinning progress indicators, to amuse the user while your program is doing something that takes a long time.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;



package Spinner;



sub new

{

    my ($class) = @_;



    bless {

        _position => 0,

        _picture  => [ '|', '/', '-', '\\', '|', '/', '-', '\\' ]

        }, $class;

}



sub spin()

{

    $_[0]->{_position} = ($_[0]->{_position} + 1) % 8;

    print $_[0]->{_picture}[$_[0]->{_position}];

    print "\r";

}





package main;



$| = 1;



my $spinner = Spinner->new;



foreach (1..20) {

    $spinner->spin;

    sleep 1;

}