Dotted progress bar for shell scripts

gistfile1.rb

require 'stringio'

class Progress

  def initialize(show)
    @device = StringIO.new unless show
  end

  def device
    @device ||= $stdout
  end
  
  def message(msg)
    device << msg
    device << "\n"
    device.flush
  end
  
  def put(token = '.')
    device << token
    device.flush
  end
end

Interface for displaying simple progress data for import or calculation scripts.