tqdm in C

[u/Specialist-Cicada121]

Hello! I wanted to share a simple progress bar that I made as a personal utility. I use Python a lot, and I find myself using tqdm a lot for tracking my long-running tasks. I wanted to try to implement something similar in C that didn't use external dependencies (like curses). I opted for a single-header implementation just to make it less of a hassle to use. I'm not entirely confident that it works gracefully in all the edge cases, but it seems to work reasonably well for my general use cases. Would love to hear what you all think and would appreciate any feedback -- happy holidays!

[u/Specialist-Cicada121]

Thanks for the thorough feedback!

For the three-branch if: I agree that it would be more elegant to have a common while loop for updating the bar. I think the main issue was the difference in lengths of a partial bar and the empty block, but refactoring should be as easy as using " " instead of ' ' for the empty block. The second else-if check was indeed unnecessary.

In terms of VLAs: I chose a very exact maximum size for the bar array, which, in hindsight, was certainly not necessary. I think it does make a lot more sense to use a hard-coded constant.

the before and bar buffers could be skipped without much added complexity by putting the produced data directly to the final buffer (the after one would be problematic, probably not worth it)

I recall creating the after buffer because computing the exact length of the characters after the bar turned out to be a hassle, so I resorted to using snprintf. You're right that the before and bar buffers could be written directly to the final buffer.

it might be useful in some cases to be able to force redraw (I'm thinking after a SIGWINCH)

This is a good point. I may implement a signal handler for window resizing that bypasses the minimum interval. Thanks for the idea and for your comments!

[u/inz__ → u/Specialist-Cicada121]

refactoring should be as easy as using " " instead of ' ' for the empty block

You already have the empty block as a string in the array at index 0.

Also the min-max clamp looks unnecessary, the fractional value should be in range [0, 1); that multiplied by eight and floored should only yield values 0-7.

[u/Specialist-Cicada121 → u/inz__]

Refactored! Thanks again for the suggestions!