recall commands previously typed in a shell or other utility
47
votes
9answers
8k views
Preserve bash history in multiple terminal windows
I consistently have more than one terminal open. Anywhere from two to ten, doing various bits and bobs. Now let's say I restart and open up another set of terminals. Some remember certain things, some ...
30
votes
12answers
2k views
best way to search my shell's history
Is there a better way to search my history file for a command than grep? I do have some idea what the command starts as, but I don't know how far back in the history it is.
update: was formerly zsh ...
26
votes
12answers
1k views
How to quickly store and access often used commands?
I have a lot of commands I routinely need to execute, often with the slightest variation.
Right now I'm storing them all in .bash_history and use CTRL-R to access them, but I wonder if there's a ...
25
votes
4answers
2k views
Is there any way to keep a command from being added to your history?
Is there any way to keep a command from being added to your history? I have a command that I want to keep out of my history file, and I really don't care to have it there when I search the history ...
19
votes
6answers
2k views
How do I close a terminal without saving the history?
More than once I've accidentally run a number of commands and polluted my bash history. How do I close my terminal without saving my bash history? I'm using Fedora.
16
votes
5answers
898 views
In what situations would a user not let the shell record his command into history?
If I add export HISTCONTROL=ignorespace in .bashrc, bash won't record any commands which have whitespace before them into history. But I do not understand under what situations it will be useful. ...
14
votes
4answers
504 views
Finding command execution time in hindsight
I've just executed a long-running process from the bash prompt. In hindsight, I wish I'd run time on it, or noted down the time at which I kicked it off.
Is there any way of getting this information ...
12
votes
3answers
818 views
Excluding some of the commands from being getting stored in bash history
Is there any way to exclude commands like rm -rf, svn revert from being getting stored in bash history? Actually I, by mistake, have issued them a number of times even though I have no intent to do, ...
11
votes
2answers
328 views
Bash: Keep only successful commands in history
Sometimes I misunderstand the syntax of a command:
# mysql -d test
mysql: unknown option '-d'
# echo $?
2
I try again and get it right:
# mysql --database test
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.
mysql ...
11
votes
1answer
1k views
How to Navigate within bash's Reverse Search?
Bash offers the functionality to reverse search via Ctrl + R. Then one can type in a part of a command it will show a fitting entry from the history.
Assume this is my history:
vim foo1
vim foo2 # I ...
10
votes
8answers
345 views
How to access the history on the fly in unix?
for example, if I do a
mkdir thisismyfolder912
I remember there is some easier way to switch to thisismyfolder912 than having to do a
cd thisismyfolder912
What is that way and how does it work? ...
10
votes
3answers
2k views
Bash history: “ignoredups” and “erasedups” setting conflict with common history across sessions
First of all, this is not a duplicate of any existing threads on SE. I have read these two threads (1st, 2nd) on better bash history, but none of the answers work - - I am on Fedora 15 by the way.
I ...
10
votes
4answers
1k views
Command-line completion from command history
So, I've looked at history and at Ctrl+R, but they are not what I thought I knew.
Is there a way that I can type in the beginning of a command, and cycle through the matches in my history with some ...
9
votes
5answers
762 views
put history command onto command line without executing it
I use !n where (n) is the line number for executing a line in the history file I want executed at the command prompt which I find via history|less.
But there is a command line history event I wish ...
8
votes
4answers
7k views
Understanding the exclamation mark (!) in bash
I used
history | less
to get the lines of previous commands and from the numbers on the left hand side I found the line I wanted repeated (eg. 22) and did
!22
at the command prompt and it ...
8
votes
4answers
346 views
How can I save the last command to a file?
When I am running my analyses using the bash shell, I often want to save the commands I've used that gave me good results to a file in the same directory (my "LOGBOOK", as its called) so that I can ...
8
votes
3answers
284 views
Mangled history
In gui mode, when a user has more than one terminal open, how do the terminals rewrite the history file of that user? the reason I ask is because, it is quite possible that in each of the terminals ...
7
votes
2answers
584 views
How to execute consecutive command from history?
Suppose I want to execute a sequence of four commands that I have executed before. If the first one is 432 in the command-history, then I could do:
$ !432; !433; !434; !435
I'm curious, is there a ...
7
votes
2answers
404 views
How can I run a command in zsh without pushing it onto the current session's history?
Both bash and zsh support a shorthand of not placing a command in history if you prepend it with a space. This works great across sessions (if you've setopt histignorespace). However, the command is ...
7
votes
1answer
1k views
How do I perform a reverse history search in ZSH's vi-mode?
I use vim for essentially all my editing needs, so I decided to once again try vi-mode for my shell (currently ZSH w/ oh-my-zsh on OS X), but I find myself trying (and failing) to use Ctrl-R ...
7
votes
4answers
763 views
Can I easily search my history across many screen windows?
My current screen session has 12 open windows on it. It's been running for weeks... I know I executed an ImageMagick convert command in one of these 12 screen windows sometime last week... is there ...
7
votes
2answers
267 views
Saving bash history from multiple Konsole not working correctly
I use multiple Konsole terminals. And I want all the commands I type in every terminal to be saved in command history, so that next konsole i open will have all of them.
To prevent each terminal from ...
6
votes
2answers
236 views
How to exit bash history search mode?
In Ubuntu 12.04 I use CTRL-r to enter a reverse history search. If the command I want is not found (after repeated CTRL-r), how do I immediately exit back to the (empty) command prompt with no ...
6
votes
1answer
581 views
What does the 'a' attribute in lsattr mean?
I was trying to remove some old history from my .bash_history file, but I was receiving this message:
[john ~] /home/john $ mv .bash_history .bas
mv: impossible to move `.bash_history' to `.bas': ...
6
votes
3answers
343 views
Bash history number not starting at 1?
I was customizing my bash prompt (I'm on OS X 10.7) when I came across something strange. Within my prompt I included !, which should give me the history number.
However the history number always ...
6
votes
2answers
2k views
Why would anyone not set 'histappend' in bash?
After finding out what this shopt -s histappend means, it seems a very sane setting, and I'm surprised that it isn't default. Of course I may be shortsighted, so why would anyone not use such a ...
6
votes
1answer
1k views
How to remove a single line from history?
I'm working in Mac OSX, so I guess I'm using bash...?
Sometimes I enter something that I don't want to be remembered in the history. How do I remove it?
6
votes
1answer
768 views
How can I remove duplicates in my .bash_history, preserving order?
I really enjoying using control+r to recursively search my command history. I've found a few good options I like to use with it:
# ignore duplicate commands, ignore commands starting with a space
...
6
votes
1answer
135 views
Is there a reverse of yank-last-arg/insert-last-argument?
yank-last-arg / insert-last-argument is probably better known by its usual shortcut, Alt-.. It's very nice to navigate through the last argument of earlier commands, but if you're navigating a little ...
6
votes
1answer
249 views
Can I have my shell history record how wildcards expanded?
If I run:
$ ls *
foo bar buzz
$ history | tail -1
ls *
You can see that in my shell history it remembers that I ran ls * rather than ls foo bar buzz. Ideally, I'd like to record both in separate ...
6
votes
2answers
2k views
How to properly escape exclamation points in bash?
Today, I was caught redhanded while attempting to code golf a password generator for Twitter.
import string as s,random;print ''.join(random.sample(s.letters+s.digits+s.punctuation,9))
90 chars. ...
6
votes
1answer
235 views
Command line prediction
I've found an interesting paper: Predicting UNIX Command Lines about command-line prediction (based on user past activity), and I wonder if any actual implementation of such thing exists?
6
votes
1answer
376 views
sharing or synchronizing history between Zsh and Bash
I often find myself switching between Bash and Zsh, and using the history search functionality to recover a command.
However, since Bash and Zsh have different history files, I often find that the ...
5
votes
4answers
2k views
How to have separate command history for different sessions for the same user?
I face this issue on some of Unix servers. When I open different session for same user, command history is shared by all the session. This creates issues if by mistake I press Ctrl-P or up arrow and ...
5
votes
3answers
825 views
Temporarily suspend bash_history on a given shell?
Is there a way to temporarily suspend history tracking in bash, so as to enter a sort of "incognito" mode? I'm entering stuff into my terminal that I don't want recorded, sensitive financial info.
5
votes
3answers
793 views
Is there a maximum size to the bash history file?
Can I increase the size of the command history in bash?
Note that I use a Red Hat Linux computer in the undergraduate astrophysics department here (so I don't get that many privileges).
5
votes
3answers
2k views
History command inside bash script
I have been bashing my head to write a simple history script for the last two days. History is a shell-built in command I couldn't able to use that within a BASH script. So, Is there a way attain this ...
5
votes
1answer
238 views
How to make bash history prefix-sensitive?
How can I make pressing up/down on bash bring up the last command that started with the prefix I already entered?
E.g.
$ ls foo
$ echo hello
$ ls <UP_ARROW>
Clicking UP after entering ls ...
5
votes
1answer
1k views
ZSH: search history on up and down keys?
Currently, I have the following in my .zshrc:
bindkey '^[[A' up-line-or-search
bindkey '^[[B' down-line-or-search
However, this only seems to match the content of my current input before a space ...
5
votes
1answer
801 views
How to search the whole of bash history without needing to go forwards and backwards?
At times when I do CtrlR to search through command history, I find that I don't reach the entry I was looking for, even though I know it's in history. I think this is due to me having passed the ...
5
votes
5answers
298 views
Would it be possible to jump between prev/next command prompts?
I'm using zsh in OS X Terminal.app and for quite a while, I've been longing for a way to jump back and forth between prev/next prompts in the terminal's output.
One convenience with this would be to ...
5
votes
1answer
593 views
How to get a persistent “history”-file even after a non-clean shutdown?
I am trying Ubuntu Server 10.10 in VirtualBox. I like that the commands I run is saved in a "history"-file that can be shown with the history command. But if I just turn off VirtualBox without the ...
5
votes
1answer
305 views
Why is my bash prompt getting bugged when I browse the history?
Often when I start looking at history of commands some of the characters from a command displayed aren't erased, for example:
What's happening:
prompt$ some_command
prompt$ some_commanother_command
...
5
votes
1answer
214 views
Re-run multiple history commands
Imagine you've just run a dozen commands. Say...
$ cd foo/ # history cmd #10000 (my history is very long)
$ ... more commands ...
$ cd ../ # history cmd #10012
I know I can re-run them ...
5
votes
1answer
258 views
history list in bash always truncated to 5000 lines at new login
Similar to the 5000 line limitation problem when first thing in .bashrc I have
export HISTSIZE=10001
and
export HISTFILESIZE=$HISTSIZE
My users do not have ~/.inputrc files and the system-wide ...
5
votes
2answers
209 views
How do I add network or user source connection data to history entries?
I would like to modify the history settings for all users on the systems that I manage.
I would like it to contain the information from the connecting terminal like from who
sysadmin:/ # who
sysadmin ...
4
votes
1answer
281 views
Why does this PS1 value cause unexpected behaviour? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
Why is my bash prompt getting bugged when I browse the history?
I have set my PS1 variable in .bashrc to be the following:
PS1='\e[35m[\W]:\e[0m '
It achieved what it ...
4
votes
5answers
272 views
How can I reproduce commands run on one machine on another machine?
I would like to install some software on a linux-machine that I have run in VirtualBox. Then I would like to do the same thing on a linux-VPS.
I think that I can save all commands that I run using ...
4
votes
2answers
73 views
If ^a^b replaces “a” once in the last command, what do I use to replace all occurrences of “a”?
In bash, if I run this command:
echo aaaaaaa
I get aaaaaaa (duh)
But then if I type in
^a^b
I end up with baaaaaa
What would I type to end up with bbbbbbb ?
4
votes
3answers
269 views
Can I insert sudo via the ^ command?
Sorry if this is a yes/no question..
I am reading this unix tutorial and found the following:
Repeating and Modifying the Previous
Command
[..]
If you mistype leavenworth as
leaveworth ...
