How to show the progress of a program without using disp()?

Recently, I've been running several large programs that would take many days to finish. It's very important for me to know the progress of the program, so that I know it is not stuck somewhere.

What is the best way to show the progress? I tried to use disp(i), but it obviously slows down the program. Is there a better way to achieve this?

Answer 1

[Walter Roberson]

waitbar() is a common way to show progress.

However, remember that waitbar() uses resources too, so using disp() selectively can be more efficient. For example instead of disp(i) you might have

if mod(i, 50) == 0; disp(i); end

or

if mod(i, 10) == 0; fprintf('.'); end; if mod(i, 500) == 0; fprintf('\n'); end

[Leon]

Many thanks! I wonder how much extra resource the if loop will consume?

[Walter Roberson]

mod() is not the fastest operation, but it is not bad.

My tests show that it is possible to do slightly better if you are willing to test at powers of 2 instead of using decimal:

mod(A_Double, A_Double)

is just slightly slower than

bitand(A_uint16, A_uint16)

for example,

u63 = uint16(63);
for K = uint16(1:30000)
  ...
  if ~bitand(K, u63) ...
  end
end

would be true at multiples of 64.