A simple demonstration of a one-line, text progress bar in Java.

gistfile1.txt

public class ProgressBar {
    public static final char BLANK = '-';
    public static final char FILL = '#';
    public static final int TOTAL_TIME = 5000;

    public static void main(String[] args) throws InterruptedException {
        int length = 30;
        if(args.length == 1) {
            length = Integer.parseInt(args[0]) - 2;
        }
        int waitTime = TOTAL_TIME / length;

        char[] progressBar = new char[length + 3];
        progressBar[0] = '[';
        progressBar[length + 1] = ']';
        progressBar[length + 2] = '\r';
        for (int i = 1; i <= length; i++) {
            progressBar[i] = BLANK;
        }

        for (int i = 1; i <= length; i++) {
            System.out.print(progressBar);
            progressBar[i] = FILL;
            Thread.sleep(waitTime);
        }
        System.out.println(progressBar);
    }
}