tlatsas / bash-spinner Goto Github PK

Thanks! This script inspired me to build a progress spinner for some scripts I'm writing.

I have found a few issues though:

• if stop_spinner is called immediately after start_spinner (or some operation completes very quickly), the output gets a bit messed up. This is because stop_spinner doesn't wait for the spinner job to terminate before writing to the terminal. This can be accomplished with a simple wait ${_sp_pid}.
• all messages are written to stdout, where stderr is usually meant for these sorts of applications. Stdout is a buffered stream, and stderr is not, so stderr will actually work a bit better (less flickering).
• the script doesn't detect if the output (or error) stream is a terminal. It's probably undesirable to print progress information if the script output is being redirected to a file or another process. You could fix this with a simple [[ ! -t 1 ]] check.

I like this spinner. It works better than the previous one I was trying. Three things, thought.

1. It would be good to make it clear whether adding a message with the start command is optional.
2. It would be good to make it totally clear that adding $? - or, better, "$?" - to the stop command is not optional.
3. I ran your script through the shellEx linter (well, the version of it available for SublimeText; there's a web version too) and it found various things it didn't like. You might want to look at those.

Anyhow: thanks for your work.

• compatible with Zsh

$ zsh ./test.sh
sleeping for 2 secs... _spinner:29: unrecognized modifier i'
[DONE]
copying non-existen files... _spinner:29: unrecognized modifier i'
[FAIL]

• compatible with *BSD/Mac OS

14:03:13  ~/repo/bash-spinner   master ✔ 
$ echo $SHELL
/bin/zsh

14:03:20  ~/repo/bash-spinner   master ✔ 
$ ./test.sh
sleeping for 2 secs... [\e[1;32mDONE\e[0m]
copying non-existen files... [\e[1;31mFAIL\e[0m]

14:03:30  ~/repo/bash-spinner   master ✔ 
$ zsh ./test.sh
sleeping for 2 secs... _spinner:29: unrecognized modifier i'
[DONE]
copying non-existen files... _spinner:29: unrecognized modifier i'
[FAIL]

14:03:39  ~/repo/bash-spinner   master ✔ 
$ bash ./test.sh
sleeping for 2 secs... [DONE]
copying non-existen files... [FAIL]

Hi,
I love your spinner!
The laws have changed since you first put out this software. It is my understanding that modification, distribution, etc. is not allowed unless expressly mentioned by the author using a license.
Can you please add a simple license (i.e. MIT, APACHE, BSD-2) to this project?
Thanks,
~Apolo