Well, with text, you can still use the latter solution as to not determine the number of lines beforehand if the file is not a fixed record file:

my $total = ( -s $FILE );
my $cummulative = 0;
while ( my $line = <FILE> ) {
   $cummulative += length( $line );
   do_processing( $line );
   printf( "%2d%% Done\n", $cummulative/$total*100.0 );
}
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-----------------------------------------------------
Dr. Michael K. Neylon - mneylon-pm@masemware.com || "You've left the lens cap of your mind on again, Pinky" - The Brain
It's not what you know, but knowing how to find it if you don't know that's important