A quick search showed the following items:

• Term::ProgressBar
• Term::StatusBar

Silly me, I forgot the main place to look. I had only hit google.

This is great though, I posted this question to beginners AT perl DOT org three days ago, but it only took about 5 mins to get a reply here!!

Unfortunately, that means I will be back much more often.

Thanks.

Just getting into the best language ever... Fancy a yourname@perl.me.uk? Just ask!!!

Unfortunately, that means I will be back much more often.

I fail to see how this is a problem ... :-)

Being right, does not endow the right to be rude; politeness costs nothing.
Being unknowing, is not the same as being stupid.
Expressing a contrary opinion, whether to the individual or the group, is more often a sign of deeper thought than of cantankerous belligerence.
Do not mistake your goals as the only goals; your opinion as the only opinion; your confidence as correctness. Saying you know better is not the same as explaining you know better.

$length = 1;
while (doing operation)
{
  for (1..$length){print "\b"}
  print $numberOfRecords;
  $length = length($numberOfRecords);
}
[download]

In other words, for each iteration of your loop, print the number of \b's equal to the string length of your last status message, then print your status message again. That way you get a constantly changing status message on STDOUT, rather than a scrolling '1 records\n','2 records\n' etc

I hope that makes sense!

Sure does!!!

Just getting into the best language ever... Fancy a yourname@perl.me.uk? Just ask!!!

package Progress;

use strict;

our $VERSION = '0.02';

sub new
{
    my $classname = shift;
    my %attr = @_;

    my $self = bless \%attr, $classname;
    
    
    $self->{style} = 'simple'
        unless defined $self->{style};

    $self->{styles} =
    {
        simple  => ["-", "\\", "|", "/"],
        bracket => ["]", ")", "|", "(", "[", "(", "|", ")"],
        line    => ["     ", "  -  ", " --- ", "-----", " --- ", "  - 
+ "],
    };
    
    if ( defined $self->{freestyles} && ref ( $self->{freestyles} ) eq
+ "ARRAY" ) 
    {
        $self->{styles}->{"free"} = $self->{freestyles};
        $self->{style} = 'free';
    }
    
    $self->reset;
    
    return $self;
}


sub reset
{
    my $self = shift;
    print chr(8) x $self->{last_char_length};
    print " " x $self->{last_char_length};
    print chr(8) x $self->{last_char_length};
    $self->{_chars} = $self->{styles}->{$self->{style}};
}

sub next
{
    
    print STDOUT "";
    $|=1;
    
    my $self=shift;
    print chr(8) x ($self->{last_char_length} );
    
    my $char = shift @{ $self->{_chars} };
    push @{ $self->{_chars} }, $char;
    $self->{last_char_length} = length ($char);
    
    print $char;
}
[download]

use Progress;

my $p = Progress->new(style=>"line");
# or
# my $p = Progress->new(style=>"bracket");
# or
# my $p = Progress->new(style=>"simple");
# or (equiv. to simple)
# my $p = Progress->new();
# or 
# my $p = Progress->new( style=>"free", freestyles => [("a".."z")]);

for ($i=0;$i<10;$i++)
{
    $p->next();
    sleep(1);
}

$p->reset();
[download]

I don't knwo how to install a non-CPAN module?

I only know perl -MCPAN -e shell

Just getting into the best language ever... Fancy a yourname@perl.me.uk? Just ask!!!

    use Smart::Comments;
    for (my $j=500; $j>0; $j--) {   ### Compiling===[%]  done
        select undef, undef, undef, 0.01;
    }
[download]

Again, how do I integrate this?

Just getting into the best language ever... Fancy a yourname@perl.me.uk? Just ask!!!

The basic usage is to call a subroutine, once every loop, through your long process. Like:

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

my $spinner_pos = 0;

sub spin {
my $spinner = '|\-/';
print STDERR substr($spinner, $spinner_pos++%length($spinner), 1)."\r"
+;
}

while (1) {
qx(cat /etc/termcap); #simulate doing important stuff 
spin();
}
[download]

So you have to design your application, and progress indicator together. There is no 1 "foolproof way" to use them. So what type of proram are you running? If you show us, we can help you with placing an indicator somewhere in the code. It's "fun" and educational to experiment yourself. Take the snippets you've received here, and play with them. You can't break anything. You will get the idea of how they work eventually.

In some "event driven programs" like Tk, you can make your indicator an object, and just do things like

$progressindicator->start;
$progressindicator->stop;
[download]

here is another widely used style of indicator used by wget

#!/usr/bin/perl

$|=1;
do{ print progress_bar( $_, 100, 25, '=' ); sleep 1 } for 1..100;

sub progress_bar {
   my ( $got, $total, $width, $char ) = @_;
   $width ||= 25;
   $char  ||= '=';
   $num_width = length $total;
   sprintf "|%-${width}s| Got %${num_width}s bytes of %s (%.2f%)\r",
       $char x (($width-1)*$got/$total). '>', $got, $total, 100*$got/$
+total;
}
[download]

---

I'm not really a human, but I play one on earth. flash japh