Possible Duplicate:
Why doesn't cp have a progress bar like wget?
Lately I have been dealing with rather large files in Linux. I often use commands like sed, cut, sort, uniq, awk, and perl to slice, dice, and view the contents of these large files. I am usually unsure whether an operation like this will complete in seconds, hours, days, or "never".
Other platforms like Windows, Mac OS X, and the Internet, are quick to show the user a progress bar indicator to show how fast the work or upload is progressing, and maybe even tell how much time is left.
With most of the above examples, it is possible guesstimate the current progress by actively thinking about how exactly the command is modifying the file, and then checking the current size of the output on disk. Or maybe by watching the rate of change of the file size on disk. But with some commands like sort -d -u big_file > output_file it seems that there is no possible way to know whether the operation will be completed in one minute or one year.
Is this missing feature intentional? Is there a linux-way to do this? Is this need usually just obviated by smaller sized files?
Would a real haxor just intuitively know the progress of these operations by merely scanning values directly out of the .pid file?
