progress

View script Copied!

Render a single-line progress bar with percentage completion.

Designed for shell loops or long-running scripts. Instead of a one-liner printf, you get proper output stream management (defaults to stderr to keep stdout clean), automatic terminal width detection to prevent line wrapping, and smart behavior in both TTY and non-TTY contexts.

Quick start

for i in {1..10}; do
    progress "$i" 10
    sleep 0.2
done

In a TTY, this renders an updating progress bar on stderr:

[#############################             ]  50%

At completion, a newline is printed so the bar doesn't get overwritten by the next command:

[##################################################] 100%

Common examples

Track processing of a file list:

files=(*.txt)
total="${#files[@]}"
current=0

for file in "${files[@]}"; do
    current=$((current + 1))
    progress "$current" "$total"
    # process "$file"
done

Use a custom width and characters:

for i in {1..50}; do
    progress --width 30 --progress-char '=' --remaining-char '.' "$i" 50
    sleep 0.05
done

Renders [======================........] 100% at completion.

Force to stdout (e.g. when stderr is redirected elsewhere):

for i in {1..100}; do
    progress --stdout "$i" 100
    # do work
done

Redirect to a log file -- in non-TTY contexts, only the 100% bar is written:

for i in {1..100}; do
    progress "$i" 100
    # do work
done 2>> progress.log

The log file contains just:

[##################################################] 100%

Output behavior

progress is smart about where and when it writes:

You can force output to stdout with --stdout or explicitly to stderr with --stderr.

Terminal width awareness

The bar width is clamped to fit the terminal so the line never wraps and breaks the \r redraw behavior. The format is:

[bar] percentage

Fixed overhead is 8 characters ([, ] , and %3d%%), so a 50-character bar setting on an 80-column terminal will be honored, but on a 40-column terminal it will be reduced to 32 characters.

Width detection uses stty, then $COLUMNS, falling back to 80.

Reference

All options

Flag Description
-w, --width N Width of the progress bar itself (default: 50), automatically clamped to fit terminal
-p, --progress-char CHAR Character for the completed portion (default: #)
-r, --remaining-char CHAR Character for the remaining portion (default: )
--stderr Force output to stderr
--stdout Force output to stdout
-h, --help Show help

Exit codes

Code Meaning
0 Success
2 Usage error (missing arguments, invalid number, width <= 0)

Dependencies

Behavior