Term::Twiddle on Win32 or how to use spinner

[icius]

Hello monks! I have been perusing the prolific "spinner" posts and there are a number of options out there. I am trying to get a spinner/status bar to work like the Term::Twiddle module, i.e.

$spinner->start;

do some other Perl stuff of my choosing

$spinner->stop;

The spinners all look great but they are all infinite loops or counted loops. I need to be able to start and stop like above. The best solution would be if someone knows of a version of Term::Twiddle that works on Windows. The next best would be if someone knows how to use any of the spinners in the above fashion. Thanks!!

[BrowserUk]

Here's a roll-your-own asynchronous spinner using fork under Win32. It's pretty crude as-is, but could be fairly easily wrapped up in a nicer interface.

Update: Added a 100ms sleep (select) to stop the spinner using half the CPU.

#! perl -sw
use strict;
use Win32::Mutex;
$|++;

my $name = 'Spin_control';
if ( my $pid = fork() ) {
    my $n=0;
    my $mutex =Win32::Mutex->new(0,$name) or die $^E;
    while($mutex->wait() != -1) {
        $mutex->release();
        print chr(13) . 'Busy';
        print substr( '-\|/', $n++ % 4,1) . chr(8);
        select(undef,undef,undef,0.1); ## Added.
    }
}
elsif ( $pid == 0 ) {
    my $mutex = Win32::Mutex->open($name);
    $mutex->wait();
    print 'Not busy' . chr(13) for 1..1000;
    print $/;
    $mutex->release();
    my $count;
    $count++ for 1..1_000_000;
    $mutex->wait();
    print 'Counted to ', $count;
}
else {
    warn 'fork() failed';
}

---

Examine what is said, not who speaks.

The 7th Rule of perl club is -- pearl clubs are easily damaged. Use a diamond club instead.

[tretin]

I'd check this thread for your spinner needs. If anybody has term::twiddle on windows, CPAN could use it.

sorry I can't be of more use, but hopefully you can find what you need there