Thread: How to show the user that something is happening?

Actually, something like this would generally be platform independent within a console type environment:

Code:

static const progressSigns[] = "/-\|";

int updateProgress()
{
   static int progress = 0;
   static const progressLen = sizeof(progressSigns) - 1; 
   printf("%c\r", progressSigns[progress]);
   fflush(stdout);
   progress = (progress + 1) % progressLen;
}

Just call updateProgress on regular intervals (e.g. every thousand records or some such).

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Mats

For something that is relatively simple like this case, you probably create more problems adding multithreading than just doing what I suggested above.

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Mats

But if the long operation is blocking, you don't have a choice.

Originally Posted by CornedBee

But if the long operation is blocking, you don't have a choice.

Yes, but in this particular example (putting IIS logs into a SQL database) should be progressing with fairly regular intervals, one would assume - of course, if the SQL database is seriously remote (or connected via really slow network) then it could take some time.

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Mats

Originally Posted by medievalelks

Plus, you might want to know when it's stuck. If you go with multiple threads, I'd consider using some kind of running record count that so you can tell if work is actually being done or if you status display is "lying".

Yes, not like my version control system that is currently showing a spinning hourglass, and has been doing so for the last xxx seconds... ;-) I suspect it's got stuck somewhere (and no, I'm not going to tell you which one it is).

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Mats

Originally Posted by medievalelks

Does it rhyme with Bisual Bource Bafe?

Not this time... I have used that one, it's pretty basic, but was OK until we tried to share the source code across the WAN to another quite distant (4 figure miles away) office...

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Mats