To use it, insert it in a pipeline between two processes, with the appropriate options. Its standard input will be passed through to its standard output and progress will be shown on standard error.

pv will copy each supplied FILE in turn to standard output (- means standard input), or if no FILEs are specified just standard input is copied. This is the same behaviour as cat(1).

A simple example to watch how quickly a file is transferred using nc(1):

pv file | nc -w 1 somewhere.com 3000

A similar example, transferring a file from another process and passing the expected size to pv:

cat file | pv -s 12345 | nc -w 1 somewhere.com 3000

A more complicated example using numeric output to feed into the dialog(1) program for a full-screen progress display:

(tar cf - . \ | pv -n -s `du -sb . | awk '{print $1}'` \ | gzip -9 > out.tgz) 2>&1 \ | dialog --gauge 'Progress' 7 70

Frequent use of this third form is not recommended as it may cause the programmer to overheat.

-p, --progress

Turn the progress bar on. If standard input is not a file and no size was given (with the -s modifier), the progress bar cannot indicate how close to completion the transfer is, so it will just move left and right to indicate that data is moving.

-t, --timer

Turn the timer on. This will display the total elapsed time that pv has been running for.

-e, --eta

Turn the ETA timer on. This will attempt to guess, based on previous transfer rates and the total data size, how long it will be before completion. This option will have no effect if the total data size cannot be determined.

-r, --rate

Turn the rate counter on. This will display the current rate of data transfer.

-b, --bytes

Turn the total byte counter on. This will display the total amount of data transferred so far.

-n, --numeric

Numeric output. Instead of giving a visual indication of progress, pv will give an integer percentage, one per line, on standard error, suitable for piping (via convoluted redirection) into dialog(1). Note that -f is not required if -n is being used.

-q, --quiet

No output. Useful if the -L option is being used on its own to just limit the transfer rate of a pipe.

-L RATE, --rate-limit RATE

Limit the transfer to a maximum of RATE bytes per second. A suffix of "k", "m", "g", or "t" can be added to denote kilobytes (*1024), megabytes, and so on.

-W, --wait

Wait until the first byte has been transferred before showing any progress information or calculating any ETAs. Useful if the program you are piping to or from requires extra information before it starts, eg piping data into gpg(1) or mcrypt(1) which require a passphrase before data can be processed.

-s SIZE, --size SIZE

Assume the total amount of data to be transferred is SIZE bytes when calculating percentages and ETAs. The same suffixes of "k", "m" etc can be used as with -L.

-i SEC, --interval SEC

Wait SEC seconds between updates. The default is to update every second. Note that this can be a decimal such as 0.1.

-w WIDTH, --width WIDTH

Assume the terminal is WIDTH characters wide, instead of trying to work it out (or assuming 80 if it cannot be guessed).

-H HEIGHT, --height HEIGHT

Assume the terminal is HEIGHT rows high, instead of trying to work it out (or assuming 25 if it cannot be guessed).

-N NAME, --name NAME

Prefix the output information with NAME. Useful in conjunction with -c if you have a complicated pipeline and you want to be able to tell different parts of it apart.

-f, --force

Force output. Normally, pv will not output any visual display if standard error is not a terminal. This option forces it to do so.

-c, --cursor

Use cursor positioning escape sequences instead of just using carriage returns. This is useful in conjunction with -N (name) if you are using multiple pv invocations in a single, long, pipeline.

-h, --help

Print a usage message on standard output and exit successfully.

-l, --license

Print details of the program's license on standard output and exit successfully.

-V, --version

Print version information on standard output and exit successfully.