> bash won't let me automatically run a command before and after each interactive command I execute, which I want for task completion notifications Incorrect.

> bash won't let me automatically run a command before and after each interactive command I execute, which I want for task completion notifications Incorrect. This can be achieved because I've done it ;) It relies on trap DEBUG (preexec) and PROMPT_COMMAND (precmd), but to make this much easier for me I've ported zsh preexec and precmd callback support to bash: https://github.com/lloeki/dotfiles/blob/master/bash/ext https://github.com/lloeki/dotfiles/blob/master/bash/ext Then with those callbacks now available it is quite easy to e.g compute time between command start and command end: https://github.com/lloeki/dotfiles/blob/master/bash/rc https://github.com/lloeki/dotfiles/blob/master/bash/rc (The time thing is commented out because I don't need it right now, I used it to display command exec time on the prompt. Note that bash EPOCHREALTIME has second-level precision) And from there notifying completion of commands that run longer than X is absolutely trivial. Other things I've "backported": - chpwd callback - the %\n thing on lack of newline in command output - PROMPT and RPROMPT - zprompt colors