Honest progress

Filed under Snippets on August 13, 2026

Counters for instant steps, native tool progress for slow ones, no theater

Counters for instant steps (a bar over four symlinks is animation over nothing); the tool’s native progress for slow ones (git --progress, curl -#), which already knows totals and ETA. TTY only, piped output clean.

TOTAL=3 N=0    # keep TOTAL equal to the number of steps
step() { N=$((N + 1)); ok "[$N/$TOTAL] $1"; }


# single-line ticker for loops over many items; cleans up after itself
tick()    { [ -t 1 ] && printf "\r    %2d/%d %s\033[K" "$1" "$2" "$3" || true; }
tickend() { [ -t 1 ] && printf '\r\033[K' || true; }


# curl: progress bar on a TTY, silent when piped (stderr carries the bar)
if [ -t 2 ]; then CURL="curl -f#L"; else CURL="curl -fsSL"; fi