Shell Programming and Scripting

    $TAR cvf - -C $directory . 2>>$LOG |
    pv -cN $TAR -s "$size" |
    gzip |
    pv -cN gzip > ${destination}

pv      monitor the progress of data through a pipe (man)
Path    : /usr/bin/pv
Version : 1.5.7 - Copyright(C) 2014 Andrew Wood <andrew.wood@ivarch.com>
Type    : ELF 64-bit LSB executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV ...)
Help    : probably available with --help

OS, ker|rel, machine: Linux, 3.16.0-4-amd64, x86_64
Distribution        : Debian 8.6 (jessie)

#!/usr/bin/perl

my ($line, $total, $suf)=("",0," KMGT");

my $dir=shift;
if(defined($dir)) { chdir($dir); }

sub gformat {
        my $s=shift;    my $p=0;
        while(($s > 1000) && (($p+1) < length($suf))) { $s /= 1000; $p++; }
        return(sprintf("%3d%s", $s, substr($suf,$p,1)));
}

while($line = <STDIN>) {
        chomp($line);

        ($dev,$ino,$mode,$nlink,$uid,$gid,$rdev,$size,
          $atime,$mtime,$ctime,$blksize,$blocks)
                       = stat($line);

        if(defined($size)) {
                $total += $size;
                printf STDERR "\r%5s %70s", gformat($total), substr($line,-70);
        }
}

printf STDERR "\r%5s %70s", gformat($total), "TOTAL";
printf STDERR "\n";

tar -cvf filename.tar /path/to/basefolder 2>&1 | ~/runtotal.pl /path/to/basefolder

OS, ker|rel, machine: SunOS, 5.11, i86pc
Distribution        : Solaris 11.3 X86
pv 1.2.0 - Copyright(C) 2010 Andrew Wood <andrew.wood@ivarch.com>