Sort .bash_history content alphabetically

Question

I'm using HISTIGNORE to ignore the most used commands and HISTCONTROL=ignoreboth:erasedups to remove duplicates.

Is there a way to periodically sort the contents of the .bash_history in alphabetical order?

Answer 1

1. To see a sorted history without changing it, do:

   history | sort -k2
   

2. To sort the history file, do:

   sort -o ~/.bash_history ~/.bash_history
   

   Then log out of bash by typing exit, and log back in. The new terminal instance will have an alphabetically sorted history.

3. For the most cautious possible way to sort the history file, first exit all running instances of bash, (for the current user anyway), then do:

   sort -o ~/.bash_history ~/.bash_history
   

   ---

   Note: Users generally have no bad results from editing ~/.bash_history while still logged in. But it's fairly certain that exiting all running instance of bash is as safe or safer.