This is generally called a command-not-found handler and are a feature of all the major shells (though the exact details differ, the general idea is to define a function with a specific reserved name), and most majors distros have ones that can be installed, even if they aren't by default.
replyI wrote my own (much faster) such handler for Arch Linux. I even wrote a blog post about the design: https://vorpal.se/posts/2025/mar/25/filkoll-the-fastest-comm...
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which is run by bash in the way I described.
replyIn /etc/bash.bashrc:
# if the command-not-found package is installed, use it if [ -x /usr/lib/command-not-found -o -x /usr/share/command-not-found/command-not-found ]; then ... fi
I thought Ubuntu did that, but not Debian. Still, that's very different than what the author mentioned
replyOh you might be right about Ubuntu vs Debian.. but I'm right about everything else I said. I went and looked at the source code.
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