This routine returns a code reference that does an animated rotating bar. If you give it a numeric argument of, say, 25 it will only turn the bar on the the 25th, 50th etc. invocation. It's pretty crude having been written when I was new to Perl.

sub init_tumble
{
    my $every = shift || 0;
    my(@tumble) = ('-', '\\', '|', '/');
    my $tsub = 0;
    my $count = 0;
    my $rs = sub
        {
             $count++;
             $saved_autoflush = STDOUT->autoflush;
             if($every)
             {
                 return if $count % $every;
             }
             STDOUT->autoflush(1);
             print "$tumble[$tsub++]\b";
             $tsub = 0 if $tsub > 3;
             STDOUT->autoflush($saved_autoflush);
         };
    return $rs;
}
[download]

You would call it like this

my $tumble = init_tumble(25)
...
while(some condition)
{
    $tumble->();
    ...
    do some stuff
    ...
}
[download]

I hope this is of use.

Cheers,

JohnGG