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We have made many, many friends over 25 years of teaching about Python, Tcl, Perl, PHP, Lua, Java, C and C++ - and MySQL, Linux and Solaris/SunOS too. Our training notes are now very much out of date, but due to upward compatability most of our examples remain operational and even relevant ad you are welcome to make us if them "as seen" and at your own risk.

Lisa and I (Graham) now live in what was our training centre in Melksham - happy to meet with former delegates here - but do check ahead before coming round. We are far from inactive - rather, enjoying the times that we are retired but still healthy enough in mind and body to be active!

I am also active in many other area and still look after a lot of web sites - you can find an index ((here))
Progress Bar Techniques - Perl

Have you ever sat there and wondered "is this program nearly done ... is it still running ... how is it getting on" and wished you had a progress bar. But then have you ever watched a jerky progress bar and felt that it's more fiction than fact?

We were discussing these aspects on today's private Perl Programming Course (though on our public schedule, this topic is left until Perl for Larger Projects). And we came to the conclusion that progress bars, when carefully implemented, are an excellent idea. So how do you carefully implement them in Perl?

Here is a sample program that I wrote:

select STDERR;
$| = 1;
for (1..14) {
   sleep 1;
   $sofar = $_/14;
   printf "At %4.2f of 1.0\r",$sofar;
   }
print "\n";
$| = 0;
select STDOUT;


And here is a LONG set of notes on a very short program!

Firstly ... the "sleep" represents the work being done and the calculation of "$sofar" represents the calculation of progress so far; it's designed to be awkward and come up with a number that's sometimes a long decimal and at other times is short.

Notes ...

1. The output of the progress bar is to STDERR and not to STDOUT; this is done so that any redirection to file doesn't cause the progress bar data to be dumperd into the file as well, but rather to remain on the screen

2. I've used $| to set autoflush mode so that the progress data is actually output and isn't simply buffered. Normally, Perl buffers up to a \n character but we haven't used any of those right up to the end of the script, so without the setting of $| we would see no report until a sudden flush.

3. \r has been used to return the cursor to the start of the current line rather that to the next line - that way, one progress report overwrites the previous one repeatedly, rather than having them scroll down the screen

4. We've used printf for our output, and used fixed width fields which are plenty long enough for values that are going to be displayed. This means that the line length will NOT change as the program runs, so won't leave "droppings" at the right hand end when a shorter line is displayed over a longer one.

5. There's an indication of just what number we're going up to with our progress bar; we indicate (for example) 0.42 of 1.0 to clearly show that we're 42% of the way through and not just 4.2% or even 0.42%.

And - but it's not explicitly illustrated in this program - I advocate that you should NOT complete one phase of a program that shows a progress bar for that phase, then go onto another section that has its own progress bar ... progress should be reported as to how you're doing through the complete job. I don't know about you, but I have had some VERY frustrating experiences where a long-waited progress bar has finished and joy has turned to dismay as another bar has appeared for some further phase that I didn't even know existed ...

Source code of the example - here
(written 2008-12-03, updated 2008-12-10)

 
Associated topics are indexed as below, or enter http://melksh.am/nnnn for individual articles
P667 - Perl - Handling Huge Data
  [639] Progress bars and other dynamic reports - (2006-03-09)
  [762] Huge data files - what happened earlier? - (2006-06-15)
  [975] Answering ALL the delegate's Perl questions - (2006-12-09)
  [1397] Perl - progress bar, supressing ^C and coping with huge data flows - (2007-10-20)
  [1924] Preventing ^C stopping / killing a program - Perl - (2008-12-05)
  [2376] Long job - progress bar techniques (Perl) - (2009-08-26)
  [2805] How are you getting on? - (2010-06-13)
  [2806] Macho matching - do not do it! - (2010-06-13)
  [2834] Teaching examples in Perl - third and final part - (2010-06-27)
  [3374] Speeding up your Perl code - (2011-07-30)
  [3375] How to interact with a Perl program while it is processing data - (2011-07-31)


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