I think you need to explore the wonders of Term::ReadKey, which has lots of neat tricks but one of them is the function ReadKey.

And I quote from perldoc Term::ReadKey ( slightly reformatted to make it read easier )

ReadKey MODE [, Filehandle]
 Takes an integer argument, which can currently be
 one of the following values:

 0    Perform a normal read using getc
-1   Perform a non-blocked read
>0   Perform a timed read

(If the filehandle is not supplied, it will
default to STDIN.) If there is nothing waiting in
the buffer during a non-blocked read, then undef
will be returned. Note that if the OS does not
provide any known mechanism for non-blocking
reads, then a `ReadKey -1' can die with a fatal
error. This will hopefully not be common.
[download]

You can play meaner games with select() if you cannot get this module installed.

mikfire