MastoPingParallelSort.bash

#!/bin/bash
###############################################################################
# File: MastoPingParallelSort.bash
#
# Author:  BobC  https://mastodon.hasameli.com/@BobC
# License: "CC BY-NC-SA 4.0" https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
#
# Requires: GNU Parallel
#
# Find the Mastodon instance closest to you based on average ping time.
#
# This is MUCH faster than the massive one-liner in MastoPingSort.bash.
###############################################################################

get_instances() {
    # Send URLs of known Mastodon instances to stdout
    echo -e "\nGathering instance URLs." >/dev/fd/2
    wget -q -O - 'https://instances.mastodon.xyz/list' | \
    grep -i 'scope=' | \
    grep -o 'https[^\"]*' | \
    sed "s+https://++" | \
    tee >(echo -e "Checking $(wc -l) instances.\nPlease allow a few minutes..." >/dev/fd/2)
}
export -f get_instances

pingit() {
    # Do up to 10 pings, then output average ping time + URL to stdout
    x=$1    # For readability
    ping -q -l 1 -i 0.2 -w 2 -c 10 $x 2>/dev/null | \
    grep "min/avg/max" | \
    cut -d/ -s -f5 | \
    echo $(cat -) $x | \
    grep "\ "
}
export -f pingit

# GNU Parallel beats xargs: Do 20 pingits in parallel per virtual core
get_instances | parallel --no-notice -j+20 pingit | sort -g -k1,1

This script works pretty much everywhere bash can be run, including the WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) included with Win10-64.