How to create a progress bar for loops

[Matthew Smith Stata]

Hi there,

I have been looking online for ways to create a progress bar that shows the completion of a loop. I found one way to do it (https://acarril.github.io/posts/progess-bar) but the "progress" makes vertical dots, instead of simply horizontal dots.

Is there a simple way to do it in Stata? Ideally it would allow you to specify a heading (e.g., running n loops) and then provide a series of horizontal dots (or any another symbol) to indicate the completion of each loop.

Any advice is much appreciated!

[Dirk Enzmann]

No, the progress bar suggested in the link you provided shows the dots horizontally (and by necessity it will continue on a new line after a certain number of dots in a row).

[Matthew Smith Stata]

Thanks for your response.

Trying this simple example, the code within the loop is between the "heading" (i.e., "Loop running") and the dots...

_dots 0, title(Loop running) reps(10)
forvalues i = 1/10 {
 
  sleep 1000
 
  _dots `i' 0
}

Any reason why this is happening?

[Dirk Enzmann]

I don't know why this is happening -- the "Stata tip 41" by David Harrison (see https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf...867X0700700111) is using virtually the same commands you are using. By the way: He also explains that -_dots- is an undocumented Stata command.

However, the following "work around" will do what you want:

local reps 70
forvalues i = 1/`reps' {
  sleep 100
  if `i'==1 _dots 0, title(Loop running) reps(`reps')
  _dots `i' 0
}

[William Lisowski]

Wow. Not only is _dots undocumented, it's so undocumented that

help undocumented

does not include it.

The designed use case for _dots is apparently to be used within a program.

. capture program drop gnxl

. program define gnxl
  1. local reps 70
  2. _dots 0, title(Loop running) reps(`reps')
  3. forvalues i = 1/`reps' {
  4.   sleep 10
  5.   _dots `i' 0
  6. }
  7. display "Done!"
  8. end

. gnxl
Loop running (70)
----+--- 1 ---+--- 2 ---+--- 3 ---+--- 4 ---+--- 5 
..................................................    50
....................Done!

.

[Matthew Smith Stata]

Ah! I see. Many thanks, Dirk and William.

Would be good if Stata invested in a documented way to do progress bar. I'll put it in the WIshlist for Stata 18

[Clyde Schechter]

Though it is not a general solution to O.P.'s question, I will just point out that if the loop is a loop over the values of one or more variables, the loop can be replaced with the -runby- command. -runby- has a -status- option which gives a periodic progress report showing how many -by- groups have been processed and the estimated time remaining. It's not the same as a progress bar, but serves the same purpose.

-runby- was written by Robert Picard and me, and is available from SSC.

[Matthew Smith Stata]

Thanks, Clyde! I will also look into this