Hey I found some help alright.
this is the script that works on win xp
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use Term::ReadKey;
print "Gimme a word: ";$|++;
while (1) {
$|++;
ReadMode 5;
$key = ReadKey (10);
chomp ($key);
ReadMode "normal";
printf "*";
$|++;
#printf "\nYou said %s, char number %03d\n",
#$key, ord $key;
last if ($key =~ /
\r\n/);
}
print "\n";