[one-liner]: How can I Trigger a Notification When a Command Line Job/Process Ends?

Background

Occasionally I need to notify myself when a long running command has finished. Here are a couple of tricks that I use to give me either a audible or visual notification.

Solution

The trick with this is to construct your command like so:

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% command; command-after &

Then in the command-after position you can do things like this:

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# ring the terminal bell
% tput bel
 
# use espeak to say stuff
% espeak "job's done!"
 
# notify-send (show's a message in upper right)
% notify-send "job's done!"

notify-send ss

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# zenity (show's a dialog box with OK button)
% zenity --info --text="Job's done"

zenity ss

Additionally if you want to only display a message if the command succeeds or fails you can use these patterns:

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# command succeeded
% command && command-after &
 
# command failed
% command || command-after &

References

• How can I trigger a notification when a job or process ends – superuser.com

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