Take a look at the non-blocked reading mode in Term::ReadKey. For example:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use warnings;
use strict;
use Term::ReadKey;

while(1) {
    #do some stuff
    print "Did something\n";
    sleep 5;
    if (my $line= ReadLine -1) {
        print "Got this command: $line";
    }
}
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When i run it i am not getting anything back from the request



$ perl current_users.pl `pwd`
##############################################
        GFMIS Exlink User Activity

   Start: 01/02/2006 10:24 : Host = EU1
##############################################
2006-01-25 15:38:24,953: Trader (DBL99911) = Connected
DISPLAY
2006-01-25 15:38:24,953: Trader (DBL99911) = Connected
Hey i got the following signal INT
Somebody sent me a SIGINT at current_users.pl line 110.
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Sorry, my magic crystal ball is still out for repair (damn Grima!). You'll need to post code for anyone to figure out what's wrong in your script. Please make an effort to cut it down to the part that's necessary (i.e. the bit that's not doing what you think it ought to) before doing so though.


There are ten types of people: those that understand binary and those that don't.

Or depending on his actual needs, even something like Curses.

#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
use IO::Select;

# by edan of perlmonks
# I just remembered what select says about mixing 
# buffered reading and "select", so even though the 
# code works, you might want to substitute 
# the read via <$fh> with:
#    my $input;
#    sysread( $fh, $input, 1024);


# loop every 1 second
my $timeout = 1;

my $s = IO::Select->new();
$s->add( \*STDIN );

while (1) {
    if ( my @ready = $s->can_read($timeout) ) {

        # we got input

        for my $fh (@ready) {
            my $input = <$fh>;
            print "got: $input";
        }
    }
    else {

        # no input
    }

    # just to show that we're looping
    print scalar localtime,"\n";
}
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