RE: A whirleygig for a progress indicator for scripts

[btrott]

In that spirit, here's another idea for improving/generalizing your code.

    package Whirley;

    sub new {
        my $type = shift;
        my $class = ref $type || $type;

        my $WHIRLEY_COUNT = -1;
        my @whirley = map chr, qw/32 176 177 178 219 178 177 176/;

        my $self = sub {
            $WHIRLEY_COUNT = 0 if ++$WHIRLEY_COUNT == @whirley;
            return $whirley[$WHIRLEY_COUNT];
        };

        bless $self, $class;
    }

    package main;

    my $whirley = new Whirley;

    while (1) {
        sleep 1;
        print STDERR "please wait: ", $whirley->(), "\r";
    }

This packages up your whirley functionality into a package and a closure--you could even put it into Whirley.pm or something; then just use it and call it as illustrated.