Python Progress Bar

Question

How do I use a progress bar when my script is doing some task that is likely to take time?

For example, a function which takes some time to complete and returns

Answer 1

If your work can't be broken down into measurable chunks, you could call your function in a new thread and time how long it takes:

import thread
import time
import sys

def work():
    time.sleep( 5 )

def locked_call( func, lock ):
    lock.acquire()
    func()
    lock.release()

lock = thread.allocate_lock()
thread.start_new_thread( locked_call, ( work, lock, ) )

# This part is icky...
while( not lock.locked() ):
    time.sleep( 0.1 )

while( lock.locked() ):
    sys.stdout.write( "*" )
    sys.stdout.flush()
    time.sleep( 1 )
print "\nWork Done"

You can obviously increase the timing precision as required.