in reply to Spining "stick"

Here's one which uses the Curses module:
#!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; use Curses; run(); sub run { initscr; while (1) { spin_stick(); # do something else sleep 1; } endwin; } BEGIN { my $stick_state = 0; my @sticks = qw(| / - \ ); sub spin_stick { addstr(1, 0, "Please wait while this stick keeps spinning...") +; addch(1, 46, $sticks[$stick_state++]); move(0,0); $stick_state = $stick_state % scalar(@sticks); refresh; } } __END__