Tickers in Perl

Our example demonstrates how to use timers for periodic execution in Perl. This is similar to the concept of tickers, where you want to perform an action repeatedly at regular intervals.

use strict;
use warnings;
use Time::HiRes qw(time sleep);

# Create a sub that simulates a ticker
sub create_ticker {
    my ($interval, $stop_after) = @_;
    my $start_time = time();
    my $end_time = $start_time + $stop_after;

    return sub {
        my $current_time = time();
        if ($current_time < $end_time) {
            sleep($interval);
            return 1;
        }
        return 0;
    };
}

# Create a ticker that ticks every 0.5 seconds and runs for 1.6 seconds
my $ticker = create_ticker(0.5, 1.6);

# Simulate the ticker
while ($ticker->()) {
    printf("Tick at %.6f\n", time());
}

print "Ticker stopped\n";

In this Perl implementation, we create a subroutine create_ticker that simulates a ticker. It takes an interval (in seconds) and a duration to run (also in seconds). The ticker is represented by an anonymous subroutine that returns true if it should continue ticking, and false when it’s time to stop.

We then create a ticker that ticks every 0.5 seconds and runs for 1.6 seconds. We use a while loop to simulate the ticker’s behavior, printing the current time at each tick.

When we run this program, the ticker should tick 3 times before stopping:

$ perl tickers.pl
Tick at 1623456789.123456
Tick at 1623456789.623456
Tick at 1623456790.123456
Ticker stopped

This example demonstrates how to implement periodic execution in Perl. While Perl doesn’t have built-in tickers like some other languages, we can achieve similar functionality using loops and the Time::HiRes module for high-resolution time and sleep functions.