Using Bash to display a progress indicator [duplicate]

Answer 1

Referred from here is a nice spinner function (with slight modification), will help your cursor to stay in original position also.

spinner()
{
    local pid=$!
    local delay=0.75
    local spinstr='|/-\'
    while [ "$(ps a | awk '{print $1}' | grep $pid)" ]; do
        local temp=${spinstr#?}
        printf " [%c]  " "$spinstr"
        local spinstr=$temp${spinstr%"$temp"}
        sleep $delay
        printf "\b\b\b\b\b\b"
    done
    printf "    \b\b\b\b"
}

with usage:

(a_long_running_task) &
spinner