Wait/Timeout

Hi! I've been using PHP to write shell scripts and was wondering how to implement the following: - I have a menuing system - If a user does not give an input within a certain amount of time, I want it to go to a default value I checked the PHP functions page and the closest thing I found was "sleep" which isn't quite right. I'm sure this is a common thing, so does anyone have any suggestions? Again, this is a terminal program and not a web CGI. While I have your attention, I also wanted to create one of those "spinners" while users wait for longer tasks to complete. I tried using the ncurses stuff to print and erase characters, but it didn't seem to work. What is a good way to create a "spinner" so that users know that the program is working. For those who don't know what I mean, I'm thinking of something like... - (backspace) \ (backspace) | (backspace) / (backspace) etc. etc. Thanks in advance! Michael