this might not be exactly what you want, but if the goal is to evaluate the progress of the operation, you could maybe look at Term::ProgressBar. I've not personally used it but have kind of kept in mind for the future. Basically, you set up the object with the total number of items to process and then update it throughout the processing and it will show you how much has been completed as well as an estimate of when it will be completed.

Here's an example straight out of the perldocs for those who don't want to click through to the above: 
#!/usr/bin/perl

  use Term::ProgressBar 2.00;

  use constant MAX => 100_000;

  my $progress = Term::ProgressBar->new(MAX);

  for (0..MAX) {
    my $is_power = 0;
    for(my $i = 0; 2**$i <= $_; $i++) {
      $is_power = 1
        if 2**$i == $_;
    }

    if ( $is_power ) {
      $progress->update($_);
    }
  }

[download]
Anyway, maybe not exactly the solution you were looking for but it's something I've been meaning to use and thought it might come in handy for your case.

In reply to Re: Live operations-per-second counter by bpphillips
in thread Live operations-per-second counter by acidmax

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.