How does this obfuscated Perl code work?

Question

How does this code work at all?

#!/usr/bin/perl

$i=4;$|=@f=map{("!"x$i++)."K$_^\x{0e}"}
"BQI!\\","BQI\\","BQI","BQ","B","";push
@f,reverse@f[1..5];@f=map{join"",undef,
map{chr(ord()-1)}split""}@f;{;$f=shift@
f;print$f;push@f,$f;select undef,undef,
undef,.25;redo;last;exit;print or die;}

Answer 1

Lets first put this through perltidy

$i = 5;
$| = @f = map { ("!" x $i++) . "9$_*\x{0e}" } ">>>E!)", ">>>E)", ">>>E", ">>>", ">>", ">", "";
push @f, reverse @f[ 1..5 ];
@f = map {
    join "",
      map { chr(ord() - 1) }
      split //
} @f;
{
    $f = shift @f;
    print $f;
    push @f, $f;
    select undef, undef, undef, .25;
    redo;
    last;
    exit;
    print or die;
}

The first line is obvious.

The second line makes a list ">>>E!)", ">>>E)", ">>>E", ">>>", ">>", ">", "", and spaces them all to be equally long and appends an asterisk and a 'Shift Out' (the character after a carriage return).

The third line appends items 5 to 1 (in that order) to that list, , so it will be ">>>E!)", ">>>E)", ">>>E", ">>>", ">>", ">", "", ">", ">>", ">>>", ">>>E".

The map decrements the all characters by one, thus creating elements like 8===D ().

The second loop simply prints the elements in the list in a loop every 0.25 seconds. The carriage return causes them to overwrite each other, so that an animation is seen. The last couple of lines are never reached and thus bogus.