C++ Console Progress Indicator

Question

What would be an easy way of implementing a console-based progress indicator for a task that\'s being executed, but I can\'t anticipate how much time it would take?

I us

Answer 1

You could try something like:

void
spinner(int spin_seconds) {
    static char const spin_chars[] = "/-\\|";
    unsigned long i, num_iterations = (spin_seconds * 10);
    for (i=0; i

Of course, this is non-standard because of the sub-second usleep() and I'm not sure if there is any guarantee that \b erases a character or not, but it works on most platforms. You can also try \r instead if \b doesn't do the trick. Otherwise, try to find a version of curses.

Edit (curses sample)

This should get you started:

#include 
#include 

void spinner(int spin_seconds) {
    static char const spin_chars[] = "/-\\|";
    unsigned long i, num_iterations = (spin_seconds * 10);
    for (i=0; i

Make sure to link with either -lcurses or -lncurses. That should work on any UNIX alike out there.