While I agree that File::CounterFile (alt.) is worth using in this instance, it (IIRC) doesn't provide any method for reseting the counter, so your forced to unlink the counter file first, or do something like...

$counter->lock;

$counter->dec while $counter->value > $DEFAULT_VALUE;

$counter->unlock;
[download]

Neither solution seemed all that graceful to me (the latter being quite painful if the current value is of any significance), so I ended up writing a patch to add a reset method ...

sub reset {   
    my($self,$default) = @_;

    $default = $File::CounterFile::DEFAULT_INITIAL 
        unless defined $default;
    
    if ($self->locked) {
        $self->{'value'} = $default;
        $self->{updated} = 1;
    } else {
        $self->lock;
        $self->{'value'} = $default;
        $self->{updated} = 1;
        $self->unlock; 
    }
    $self->{'value'}; # return value
}
[download]

... which'd turn sidhartha's code into ...

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use File::CounterFile;

my $COUNTER       = '/path/to/bg.cnt';
my $DEFAULT_VALUE = 0;

my @BACKGROUND    = qw(
  corner.jpg    anduin.jpg    gandalf.jpg  
  ford.jpg
);

my $c = File::CounterFile->new( $COUNTER, $DEFAULT_VALUE );
   $c->reset if $c->inc > $#BACKGROUND;

print <<EndOfHTML;
Content-type: text/html

<td background="images/$BACKGROUND[$c]">
EndOfHTML
[download]

    --k.