Re-implementation of bash wait to do parallel commands. I prefer wait but this is an alternative.

gistfile1.sh

for host in $hostlist; do
  scp $filename $host: &
  echo "$!" >>$pidlistfile
done

while [ "`wc -l $pidlistfile`" -gt 0 ]; do 
  for pid in `cat $pidlistfile`; do
    if ! kill -0 $pid 2>/dev/null; then
      sed -e "/^$pid\$/d" $pidlistfile
    fi
  done
  echo -n "."
  sleep 1
done