Perl question - thread/fork?

[Lee Larcombe]

Hi all

I am trying to work out how I could call a program from within a perl
script, and display some sort of indication to the user that it is running
which stops when it is finished.

So I have eg:

Print "Starting analysis. Please wait...\n";

System "programThatTakesAges";


The 'programThatTakesAges' analyses some files and can take 10,20,30 mins or
so (could be longer), then the perl script carries on and does things with
those files. I would like the user to have some feedback that something is
happening after the 'Please wait...' - a spinny cursor would be nice :-)

Anyway, I can't work out how to get the script to do the system call and
then do something whilst it waits for it to finish. I've been looking at
using a thread or a fork - I'm sure it must be one of those - but I can't
really work it out.

Anyone got any tips or example code that would help?

Thanks

Lee

============================
Lee Larcombe

www.larcombesplace.org.uk
msn: leelarcombe at hotmail.com