How to create a rotation animation using shell script?

Question

I am looking for a script that creates a rotation animation using character /,-, | and \.

If you continuously switch between these characters it should look like its rotating. How to make this?

Answer 1

Use that script:

#!/bin/bash

chars="/-\|"

while :; do
  for (( i=0; i<${#chars}; i++ )); do
    sleep 0.5
    echo -en "${chars:$i:1}" "\r"
  done
done

The while loop runs infinite. The for loop runs trough each character of the string given in $chars. echo prints the character, with a carriage return \r, but without linebreak -n. -e forces echo to interpret escape sequences such as \r. There's a delay of 0.5 seconds between each change.

Answer 2

Here's an example using \b, which tells the terminal emulator to move the cursor one column to the left, in order to keep overwriting the same character over and over.

#!/usr/bin/env bash

spinner() {
    local i sp n
    sp='/-\|'
    n=${#sp}
    printf ' '
    while sleep 0.1; do
        printf "%s\b" "${sp:i++%n:1}"
    done
}

printf 'Doing important work '
spinner &

sleep 10  # sleeping for 10 seconds is important work

kill "$!" # kill the spinner
printf '\n'

See BashFAQ 34 for more.

Answer 3

very minimal way of writing using printf

sh-5.1$ while true ; do for i in \\ "|" / "-"; do printf "$i" ; sleep 0.1 ; printf "\b" ; done ; done

Answer 4

Since you don't explicitly ask for bash, a little plug for the fish shell, where this can be solved beautifully IMO:

set -l symbols ◷ ◶ ◵ ◴
while sleep 0.5
    echo -e -n "\b$symbols[1]"
    set -l symbols $symbols[2..-1] $symbols[1]
end

In this case, symbols is an array variable, and the contents if it are rotated/shifted, because $symbols[2..-1] are all entries but the first.