The following bit of scrolling banner code might help. It uses the "\b" character to erase characters from the terminal.

For anything more advanced I would look for a curses module on CPAN.

#! /usr/bin/perl -w
#
# file:    banner-1.pl
# purpose: try to write a scrolling banner
# details: this script shows how to implement a scrolling banner
#   that will run in a xterm window.
#
# author:  chad c d clark
# created: 2006-05-21
#
# based on the following code by Chris Angell:
#   perl -e'$|++; 1 while select("","","",.04), 
#           print "\b", qw(/ - \ |)[$i++%4]'
#
# $Id$

use strict;
use POSIX;  # ceil()

# my $MESG = "This is my test message.  ";
# my $SIZE = 70;
# #my $SIZE = 10;

# my $MESG = " " . `/usr/bin/w | /usr/bin/sed 2d`; chomp $MESG;
# my $SIZE = 70;

my $MESG = qq{
The reason I'm so excited is it looks like if you plot price against
profit, you get a nice curve with a big hump in the middle! And we all
+ know
what humps mean! Humps mean local maxima! Or camels. But here they mea
+n
local maxima! - Joel Spolsky
};
my $SIZE = 70;

$|++;  # do not buffer output I/O

# remove "non-printable" characters (for example newlines)
if ($MESG =~ s/[^[:print:]]/ /g) {
    print STDERR "$0: Warning removing non-printable characters from m
+essage.\n";
}

my $offset = 0;             # start at beginning of the message
my $length = length $MESG;  # get the length of the message

# to simulate a circular buffer the idea is to append the message stri
+ng
# to itself until we have enough extra to cover the display window.
my $mult = ceil( ($length + $SIZE) / $length );
$MESG = $MESG x $mult;

print "Text:  ";
# prime the loop for the space where the message will be printed
print " " x $SIZE;

while (1) {

    # get a chunk of the message
    my $chunk = substr $MESG, $offset, $SIZE;

    # print the chunk over the the last iteration
    print "\b" x $SIZE, $chunk;

    select("","","",.15);  # sleep for part of a second

    # advance/wrap the offset pointer
    if (++$offset >= $length) { $offset = 0 };
}

exit(0);
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