Question

I’m writing a console program in C++ to download a large file. I know the file size, and I start a work thread to download it. I want to show a progress indicator to make it look cooler.

How can I display different strings at different times, but at the same position, in cout or printf?

Answer 1

With a fixed width of your output, use something like the following:

float progress = 0.0;
while (progress < 1.0) {
    int barWidth = 70;

    std::cout << "[";
    int pos = barWidth * progress;
    for (int i = 0; i < barWidth; ++i) {
        if (i < pos) std::cout << "=";
        else if (i == pos) std::cout << ">";
        else std::cout << " ";
    }
    std::cout << "] " << int(progress * 100.0) << " %\r";
    std::cout.flush();

    progress += 0.16; // for demonstration only
}
std::cout << std::endl;

http://ideone.com/Yg8NKj

[>                                                                     ] 0 %
[===========>                                                          ] 15 %
[======================>                                               ] 31 %
[=================================>                                    ] 47 %
[============================================>                         ] 63 %
[========================================================>             ] 80 %
[===================================================================>  ] 96 %

Note that this output is shown one line below each other, but in a terminal emulator (I think also in Windows command line) it will be printed on the same line.

At the very end, don’t forget to print a newline before printing more stuff.

If you want to remove the bar at the end, you have to overwrite it with spaces, to print something shorter like for example "Done.".

Also, the same can of course be done using printf in C; adapting the code above should be straight-forward.