always prompt the user before executing a command in the shell

Solution 1:

Do you want it to work without typing an extra command, e.g.

$ rm file

Or only when the user types something like

$ confirm rm file

Or only when the user tries to run certain commands, e.g.

$ rm file

but not for

$ echo "Hello"

If option 1, that can be done using the preexec hook in zsh, or the DEBUG trap in bash.

If option 2, put something like this in /etc/bash.bashrc or other shell startup file.

confirm() {
    echo -n "Do you want to run $*? [N/y] "
    read -N 1 REPLY
    echo
    if test "$REPLY" = "y" -o "$REPLY" = "Y"; then
        "$@"
    else
        echo "Cancelled by user"
    fi
}

If option 3, you could modify the confirm script above, or, some commands have an option to ask before doing something, e.g. rm -i. You could put alias rm='rm -i' in /etc/bash.bashrc.

Solution 2:

I have played with bash a bit and figured out a hack by which this could be made possible.

#!/bin/bash

debug_trap () {
    echo "executing $BASH_COMMAND"
    echo "Allow?"
    select choice in yes no
    do
        if [ "$choice" = "yes" ]
        then break
        elif [ "$choice" = "no" ]
        then return 1
        fi
    done
}

shopt -s extdebug
trap debug_trap DEBUG

You can save this script under, say, confirm-any-command.sh and source it in your bashrc. It will ask for confirmation of each command you will try to execute.

Please note that this is nothing more than a proof-of-concept hack; I doubt it can really be any useful in this form. If you will have to confirm each and every command you type, you will very soon acquire a habit to automatically hit "yes" after each command. Your mental mapping for "end of command" will change from just Enter to Enter,yes,Enter - you will be typing it as a whole, don't even trying to spend some time on verifying that you really want this command to execute. This is counterproductive and won't help you.