progress(1) is a separate utility on BSD; one of my favorites.  (Although it is also built in to BSD ftp.)<p>I regularly use progress with dd, tar and other utilities.<p>At least one BSD dd now has a &quot;msgfmt&quot; option that outputs parseable, printf-style format strings.<p>Truthfully, I prefer it when these basic utilities are static except for fixing bugs.  Using the new features in scripts means the scripts might lose some portability.