NAME
bup-newliner - make sure progress messages don’t overlap with output
SYNOPSIS
<any command> 2>&1 | bup newliner
DESCRIPTION
bup newliner is run automatically by bup. You shouldn’t need it unless
you’re using it in some other program.
Progress messages emitted by bup (and some other tools) are of the form
“Message ### content”, that is, a status message containing a variable-
length number, followed by a carriage return character and no newline.
If these messages are printed more than once, they overwrite each
other, so what the user sees is a single line with a continually-
updating number.
This works fine until some other message is printed. For example,
progress messages are usually printed to stderr, but other program
messages might be printed to stdout. If those messages are shorter
than the progress message line, the screen will be left with weird
looking artifacts as the two messages get mixed together.
bup newliner prints extra space characters at the right time to make
sure that doesn’t happen.
If you’re running a program that has problems with these artifacts, you
can usually fix them by piping its stdout and its stderr through bup
newliner.
BUP
Part of the bup(1) suite.
AUTHORS
Avery Pennarun <apenwarr@gmail.com>.