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A comment on The apt command: Combining apt-get and apt-cache and adds a progress bar (2014). Parent comment

Re:The apt command: Combining apt-get and apt-cache and adds... by josho on Saturday March 05, 2016 @03:46PM (#11231017)
I've always assumed something like the above is slow due to the terminal blocking the program to perform updates to the display.

Whereas a status indicator isn't exactly pushing much data to the terminal. So, It shouldn't impact run time.

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Re:The apt command: Combining apt-get and apt-cache and adds... by clebio on Saturday March 05, 2016 @07:28PM (#11231840)
I also suspect (though have not verified) that any output to terminal is quite a bit slower than the raw operation -- that sort of difference that we should all know, as programmers.

http://norvig.com/21-days.html#answers

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Re:The apt command: Combining apt-get and apt-cache and adds... by clebio on Saturday March 05, 2016 @05:13PM (#11231314)
Yes, that's a reasonable assumption. I am by no means a terminal guru, but my understanding is that, for something like a progress bar or spinner (anything that is updated in-place in the terminal), the entire "screen" is being redrawn on update.
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