In Bash, how to add “Are you sure [Y/n]” to any command or alias?

Question

In this particular case, I\'d like to add a confirm in Bash for

Are you sure? [Y/n]

for Mercurial\'s hg push ssh://username@www.example.com//some

Answer 1

This isn't exactly an "asking for yes or no" but just a hack: alias the hg push ... not to hgpushrepo but to hgpushrepoconfirmedpush and by the time I can spell out the whole thing, the left brain has made a logical choice.

Answer 2

No pressing enter required

Here's a longer, but reusable and modular approach:

• Returns 0=yes and 1=no
• No pressing enter required - just a single character
• Can press enter to accept the default choice
• Can disable default choice to force a selection
• Works for both zsh and bash.

Defaulting to "no" when pressing enter

Note that the N is capitalsed. Here enter is pressed, accepting the default:

$ confirm "Show dangerous command" && echo "rm *"
Show dangerous command [y/N]?

Also note, that [y/N]? was automatically appended. The default "no" is accepted, so nothing is echoed.

Re-prompt until a valid response is given:

$ confirm "Show dangerous command" && echo "rm *"
Show dangerous command [y/N]? X
Show dangerous command [y/N]? y
rm *

Defaulting to "yes" when pressing enter

Note that the Y is capitalised:

$ confirm_yes "Show dangerous command" && echo "rm *"
Show dangerous command [Y/n]?
rm *

Above, I just pressed enter, so the command ran.

No default on enter - require y or n

$ get_yes_keypress "Here you cannot press enter. Do you like this"
Here you cannot press enter. Do you like this [y/n]? k
Here you cannot press enter. Do you like this [y/n]?
Here you cannot press enter. Do you like this [y/n]? n
$ echo $?
1

Here, 1 or false was returned. Note no capitalisation in [y/n]?

Code

# Read a single char from /dev/tty, prompting with "$*"
# Note: pressing enter will return a null string. Perhaps a version terminated with X and then remove it in caller?
# See https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/367880/143394 for dealing with multi-byte, etc.
function get_keypress {
  local REPLY IFS=
  >/dev/tty printf '%s' "$*"
  [[ $ZSH_VERSION ]] && read -rk1  # Use -u0 to read from STDIN
  # See https://unix.stackexchange.com/q/383197/143394 regarding '\n' -> ''
  [[ $BASH_VERSION ]] && </dev/tty read -rn1
  printf '%s' "$REPLY"
}

# Get a y/n from the user, return yes=0, no=1 enter=$2
# Prompt using $1.
# If set, return $2 on pressing enter, useful for cancel or defualting
function get_yes_keypress {
  local prompt="${1:-Are you sure} [y/n]? "
  local enter_return=$2
  local REPLY
  # [[ ! $prompt ]] && prompt="[y/n]? "
  while REPLY=$(get_keypress "$prompt"); do
    [[ $REPLY ]] && printf '\n' # $REPLY blank if user presses enter
    case "$REPLY" in
      Y|y)  return 0;;
      N|n)  return 1;;
      '')   [[ $enter_return ]] && return "$enter_return"
    esac
  done
}
    
# Credit: http://unix.stackexchange.com/a/14444/143394
# Prompt to confirm, defaulting to NO on <enter>
# Usage: confirm "Dangerous. Are you sure?" && rm *
function confirm {
  local prompt="${*:-Are you sure} [y/N]? "
  get_yes_keypress "$prompt" 1
}    

# Prompt to confirm, defaulting to YES on <enter>
function confirm_yes {
  local prompt="${*:-Are you sure} [Y/n]? "
  get_yes_keypress "$prompt" 0
}

Answer 3

Add the following to your /etc/bashrc file. This script adds a resident "function" instead of an alias called "confirm".

---

function confirm( )
{
#alert the user what they are about to do.
echo "About to $@....";
#confirm with the user
read -r -p "Are you sure? [Y/n]" response
case "$response" in
    [yY][eE][sS]|[yY]) 
              #if yes, then execute the passed parameters
               "$@"
               ;;
    *)
              #Otherwise exit...
              echo "ciao..."
              exit
              ;;
esac
}

Answer 4

Not the same, but idea that works anyway.

#!/bin/bash  
i='y'  
while [ ${i:0:1} != n ]  
do  
    # Command(s)  
    read -p " Again? Y/n " i  
    [[ ${#i} -eq 0 ]] && i='y'  
done  

Output:
Again? Y/n N
Again? Y/n Anything
Again? Y/n 7
Again? Y/n &
Again? Y/n nsijf
$

Now only checks 1st character of $i read.

Answer 5

This may be a little too short, but for my own private use, it works great

read -n 1 -p "Push master upstream? [Y/n] " reply; 
if [ "$reply" != "" ]; then echo; fi
if [ "$reply" = "${reply#[Nn]}" ]; then
    git push upstream master
fi

The read -n 1 just reads one character. No need to hit enter. If it's not a 'n' or 'N', it is assumed to be a 'Y'. Just pressing enter means Y too.

(as for the real question: make that a bash script and change your alias to point to that script instead of what is was pointing to before)

Answer 6

This may be a hack:

as in question In Unix / Bash, is "xargs -p" a good way to prompt for confirmation before running any command?

we can using xargs to do the job:

echo ssh://username@www.example.com//somepath/morepath | xargs -p hg push

of course, this will be set as an alias, like hgpushrepo

Example:

$ echo foo | xargs -p ls -l
ls -l foo?...y
-rw-r--r--  1 mikelee    staff  0 Nov 23 10:38 foo

$ echo foo | xargs -p ls -l
ls -l foo?...n

$