I have once have written my own little Module for that purpose. I donīt know if it works on Unix (if not please tell me), but for Windows it works fine.
Other than a progressbar it is capable to display a rotating line, a widening/narrowing line or rotating brackets.
That is especially useful when you donīt know the amount of work before it is done.

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 it as follows:

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]

Update:
To "install" this, simply copy & paste the first code-block and save it as "Progress.pm" to the perl-library path (most probably "perl/lib").