Spinning cursor and progress bar in console (Python)

spinning_cursor.py

"""
Create a spinning cursor or progress bar in terminal can be useful
for some scripts.

1. Use '\r' to move cursor back to the line beginning. Or use '\b'
   to erase the last character.
2. The standard out of Python is buffered, which means it will 
   collect some data written to standard out before it actually 
   writes to the terminal.
   The code snippet
   for i in range(5):
     time.sleep(1)
     print i
   will wait for 5 seconds before printing '01234' into the 
   terminal.
   Use sys.stdout.flush() to force printing to terminal.
"""

import time
import sys

# Spinning cursor
def spinning_cursor():
  while True:
    for cursor in '\\|/-':
      time.sleep(0.1)
      # Use '\r' to move cursor back to line beginning
      # Or use '\b' to erase the last character
      sys.stdout.write('\r{}'.format(cursor))
      # Force Python to write data into terminal.
      sys.stdout.flush()
      
# Progress bar
def progress_bar():
  for i in range(100):
    time.sleep(0.1)
    sys.stdout.write('\r{:02d}: {}'.format(i, '#' * (i / 2)))
    sys.stdout.flush()

For anyone else showing up here from google:

python 3.8+ has new string formatting that has the same functionality as sys without needing to import it:

import time

def spinning_cursor():
  while True:
    for cursor in '\\|/-':
      time.sleep(0.1)
      print(f"\r{cursor}", end="", flush=True)

def progress_bar():
  for i in range(101):
    time.sleep(0.1)
    print(f"\r{i:02d}: {'#'*(i//2)}", end="", flush=True)
    # print(f"\r{i:02d}: [{'#'*(i//2)}{'='*(50-(i//2))}>]", end="", flush=True) #fancier pbar

Nice spinning cursor. Thank you.

This is awesome, thank you!