I was bored, so here's a tie version:

package Status;

sub TIESCALAR {
  my $c = shift;

  my @v = @_;
  @v = ('|', '/', '-', '\\') unless @v;

  bless { vals => \@v,  status => 0 }, $c;
}

sub FETCH { $_[0]->{status} = ($_[0]->{status} + 1) % scalar @{ $_[0]-
+>{vals} }; return $_[0]->{vals}[ $_[0]->{status} ] }

package main;

$| = 1;

tie $s, 'Status';

while (1) {
        print $s;
        select(undef,undef,undef,0.1);
        print "\r" x 40;
}
[download]

Just pass in the sequence when tying:

tie $status, 'Status', qw( - + | + );
[download]

or let it default to the one you specified above.

[ ar0n ]