For file-count-based progress, you need a find that supports -print0; this includes GNU find (most Linuxes have this) and the find command found natively on at least two of the BSD's.

For file-size-based progress, you have two options:

• Use a "find" command that supports -printf; this includes GNU find but not FreeBSD's find. Use such a find command with the full-prestat progress mode.
• Use a "find" command that supports -print0, in the full-poststat progress mode. This is a little slower than full-prestat, but should be OK in most situations.

Faking find -print0:

• You can kind of fake having -print0 with "find / -xdev -print | tr '\012' '\0'".
• Of course, this is going to make a mess of files that have newlines in their filenames - which should be rare, but isn't impossible.
• This should be necessary on very few systems; almost all find's have a -print0 now. Some find's do not have a -printf though.

Generally speaking, file-size-based progress is more accurate than file-count-based progress.

See Example use for examples of the above.