Re: dd patch to output transfer rate, byte count, and time

[P]

Paul Eggert wrote:
> The Debian unstable version of "dd" also outputs a total byte count,
> seconds taken, and transfer rate.  This is an often-asked-for feature,
> and seems useful.  I installed this implementation instead, which I
> wrote from scratch.  The Debian version suppresses this new output if
> POSIXLY_CORRECT is set, but I just checked POSIX and it allows this
> behavior so I turned it on unconditionally.
>
> In theory this change might break some scripts.  Does anybody think
> this will be a problem in practice?  If so, I suppose we could enable
> the new behavior only conditionally.

Hmm there could be "GUI copy programs" out there that use
SIGUSR1 to display a progress bar?

Personally I don't think sending SIGUSR1 is a user friendly
interface, which is what this feature is supposed to be.
So personally I would have just added a --progress option.

Then for the implementation, use alarm(1), and
print on 1 line like: fprintf (stderr, _("\r%s copied in %gs (%s/s)"),
Also possibly don't print num records {in,out}
lines if --progress specified?

Pádraig.