shellpipestderr

How to pipe stderr to notify-send?

I run programs using keybindings, which themselves could call dmenu and do things in the background. I would love to pipe stderr to notify-send and get a notification if something failed.

These programs are not called from a terminal emulator, mostly sxhkd coupled with an xdg-open alternative jaro.

Take this example, for instance:

$ ls /root
"/root": Permission denied (os error 13)
$ ls /root 2> /dev/null
$

If I had an sxhkd entry

super + Return
  ls /root

How can I have it output stderr to a notification?

Solution

  • Create a script notify-pipe:

    #!/usr/bin/env sh

read notification
notify-send "Command Failed" "$notification" "$@"

    And pipe stderr to stdout:

    $ ls /root  2>&1| notify-pipe

    Possible enhancement: bash get command that was used before pipe symbol to get the command in the notification summary.

    Thanks for the help, Ron.