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

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
}