bcd_clock

Usage

bcd_clock

Description

I got a "binary-coded decimal clock" a few Christmases back:

(Image stolen from here.)

On a lark, I wrote a small Perl script to do the equivalent display in an (assumed ANSI) terminal window.

Here's a screen snapshot. The little red rectangles inside the parens are updated every second, as is the time at the bottom.

Features:

• The Term::ANSIScreen module available from CPAN handles text positioning, color, and formatting.
• The Term::ReadKey module (which is either included in Perl, or available from CPAN, I forget) handles non-blocking terminal reads. This was implemented so that pressing the Q key will quit.

It could well be that a more judicious selection of fonts, characters, etc. would make the display more pleasing. Obviously, it's easy to play with.

There's a "sleep 1" in the script's main loop. Since the calculations inside the loop also take a finite amount of time, it's likely that a second will be skipped every so often. I haven't noticed that happening, though.

HTMLized Source

Source

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Last modified: April 20 2007 19:54 EDT