Glib ( the non-gui object class on which Gtk2 is built) will easily let you make a simple timer. See Roll your own Event-loop You can also subclass Glib but you may need to go to the maillist for help with that. See Subclass Glib

#!/usr/bin/perl
use warnings;
use strict;
use Glib;

my $main_loop = Glib::MainLoop->new;

my $count = 1;
my $timer  = Glib::Timeout->add (1000, \&timer_callback, undef, 1 );

sub timer_callback{
     $count++;
     print "$count\n";
    return 1;     # return 0 to stop timer
}

my $count1 = 1;
my $timer1  = Glib::Timeout->add (100, \&timer1_callback, undef, 1 );

sub timer1_callback{
     $count1++;
     print "\t$count1\n";
     return 1;
}


###  filehandle watch
open (FH, "+> test.log") or warn "$!\n";

Glib::IO->add_watch (fileno 'FH', ['in'], \&watch_callback, 'FH', 1 );


$main_loop->run;
####################################################################
sub watch_callback {
    my ($fd, $condition, $fh) = @_;
    my @lines = <FH>;
    print @lines;
    #always return TRUE to continue the callback 
    return 1;
}
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