Progress indicators in Bash Scripting - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Progress indicators

📖 Scenario: You are writing a bash script to simulate a task that takes some time. You want to show a progress indicator to the user so they know the script is working.

🎯 Goal: Create a bash script that shows a simple progress indicator using dots printed one by one with a delay.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a variable to hold the total number of steps.

Create a loop that runs from 1 to the total number of steps.

Print a dot . for each step without a newline.

Add a short delay between printing each dot.

Print a newline after the loop finishes.

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Progress indicators help users know that a script or program is running and not frozen. This is common in installers, data processing scripts, or any long task.

💼 Career

Many automation and scripting jobs require showing progress or status updates to users or logs. Knowing how to create simple progress indicators is a useful skill.

1

Set the total number of steps

Create a variable called total_steps and set it to 10.

Bash Scripting

# Create a variable called total_steps and set it to 10
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use total_steps=10 to create the variable.

2

Create a loop to run through the steps

Write a for loop using i that runs from 1 to total_steps.

Bash Scripting

total_steps=10
# Write a for loop from 1 to total_steps using i
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use for i in $(seq 1 $total_steps); do to start the loop.

3

Print a dot for each step with a delay

Inside the loop, print a dot . without a newline using echo -n. Then add a delay of 0.5 seconds using sleep 0.5.

Bash Scripting

total_steps=10
for i in $(seq 1 $total_steps); do
    # Print a dot without newline
    # Add a delay of 0.5 seconds
    # Your code here
done

Need a hint?

Use echo -n "." to print without newline and sleep 0.5 to pause.

4

Print a newline after the progress

After the loop, print a newline using echo to move to the next line.

Bash Scripting

total_steps=10
for i in $(seq 1 $total_steps); do
    echo -n "."
    sleep 0.5
done
# Print a newline here
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use echo without arguments to print a newline.