Walking Carrot BASH

I have been working on a little typing game that creates a random string, explodes that string, and watches for input to match the displayed characters. Thanks to all the help i've received here on SO i'm sooo close... but. I am totally stumped. My question: The best way to implement a walking "^" under each character such that

3 x P ! 0 D 3 D 5 T r ! n G
^

is first set to a var i can check against, then moves with correct input

3 x P ! 0 D 3 D 5 T r ! n G
  ^

I don't want to paste a ton of code in here so Checkout my github http://ift.tt/2bLYxHy for reference. Thanks!