Introduction We all write programs to run on the terminal to do jobs that take time, like processing logs, sending out newsletter, etc. To know the progress of our task we print some messages to know our program is running well and doing its job. But wouldn't it be nice if we could add a progress bar to keep track of the completion of the task like wget, curl, etc. Here's how we can do it in Perl, we'll use the perl module Term::ProgressBar to build and update the progress bar. The Code A very simple example: Code: #!/usr/bin/perl $| = 1; use Term::ProgressBar; use Time::HiRes qw/usleep/; my $number_of_entries = 2000; my $progress = Term::ProgressBar->new ({count => $number_of_entries ,name => 'Sending'}); for(1..$number_of_entries) { usleep(650); $progress->update($_); } The output: Code: [root@deepzdev test]# ./prg_bar.pl Sending: 40% [======================================= *] If you like to print some message and/or show an time estimate of the remaining time, here's another example: Code: #!/usr/bin/perl $| = 1; use Term::ProgressBar; use Time::HiRes qw/usleep/; my $number_of_entries = 10; my $progress = Term::ProgressBar->new ({count => $number_of_entries ,name => 'Sending',ETA=>'linear'}); for(1..$number_of_entries) { sleep(5); $progress->update($_); $progress->message("\rSent $_ of $number_of_entries"); } The output Code: [root@deepzdev test]# ./prg_bar.pl Sent 1 of 10 Sent 2 of 10 Sending: 20% [=================== ]0m40s Left You can find more advanced option of the module at cpan.org
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Nice. Suppose I have a program which runs for say 20 mins and want to show progress bar that. In this what would be $number_of_entries?
Generally, progress bar is used to show the progress of the operations being performed not the time, but if you want number_of_entries will be 20 which is for 20 mins, you should increment the progress bar every 1 minute.
Let me reframe my query. Suppose I have a program which run for some time (I dont know the exact time). Now I want to show the progress. Now what should be the input to your program?