I need to track where I currently am, and therefore, I would like the program to spit out the current iteration of the loop.

In Windows, "\r" can sometimes be useful when tracking the progress of a script. It's a bit like "\n", except "\n" moves to the left edge of the next line, whereas "\r" moves to the left edge of the current line.

The following script prints 1 to 5 and a string on the same line of output.

I normally put the "\r" at the start of the output. That way if the script dies or outputs something it will not overwrite the progress info. Also, if the output strings are of different sizes, you'll need to output some spaces at the end to overwrite the previous output string.

('Cmd' windows and their buffers can be made wider, if needed, by adjusting the "Screen Buffer Size" and "Window Size" in the "Layout" tab of the window's properties. Right-click on the window's title bar, then select "Properties".)

use strict;
use warnings;

$| = 1;     # enable auto-flush

foreach my $i ( 1 .. 5 )
{
    my $output = '*' x (50 - 10*$i);
    print "\r$i : $output", " "x20;
    sleep 1;
}

print "\n";
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Output. NB Each line of output is printed on the same line of the 'Cmd' window.

1 : ****************************************
2 : ******************************
3 : ********************
4 : **********
5 :
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