Ubuntu – How to save a part of command lines into a new file using history command

bashcommand line

I am a beginner of bash.
I know that type

history

can show all command lines and .bash_history save all of them. But if I want a part of command lines (e.g., current session) and save them into a new file, what should I do? I checked

history --help

and still, do not understand how to do so.
Thanks for help in advance!

Best Answer

Current session:

You can do so by running the following command in the terminal:

history -a ~/current_session.txt

Current session's history will be saved to a file named current_session.txt in your home directory.

Certain inputs:

You can also search all history for a certain input and save the output to a file. For example to save all lines that have install in them, please run the following command in the terminal:

history | grep install > ~/search_results.txt

Search results will be saved to a file named search_results.txt in your home directory.

Change install to whatever you want to search for.

To search for multiple inputs put them between two quotation marks "" , separate them with a pipe | and put -E before them like so:

history | grep -E "install|update|upgrade" > ~/search_results.txt

Best of luck

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The commands are not visible because Bash saves history to the .bash_history file only after the shell quits, and this happens very rarely with Guake. There is a simple workaround to make Bash append the history (instead of overwriting the file) after every command

shopt -s histappend
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Open your ~/.inputrc. If you don't have this file, see the end for how to create it. Add these lines:

## arrow up
"\e[A":history-search-backward
## arrow down
"\e[B":history-search-forward

Lines starting with # are comments. I can't remember what is backward and what forward. Experiment with it. Maybe you have to switch backward and forward.

Just re-open possibly open terminal windows for the new behaviour to become effective.

A bit background information:

Bash is using readline to handle the prompt. ~/.inputrc is the configuration file for readline. Note that this will also take effect in other software using the readline library, for example IPython.

Read the bash manual for more information about readline. There you can also find more history related readline commands.

To get the escape codes for the arrow keys you can do the following:

Start cat in a terminal (just cat, no further arguments).
Type keys on keyboard, you will get things like ^[[A for up arrow and ^[[B for down arrow.
Replace ^[ with \e.

For more information about ^[ and \e see here: https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/89817/380515

If you don't already have a ~/.inputrc file, copy the default settings over, or all the other default key bindings will be overridden:

cp /etc/inputrc ~/.inputrc

or begin your ~/.inputrc file with the following line

$include /etc/inputrc

[1]:

Best Answer

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