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becko
Asked: 2015-04-10 05:56:23 +0800 CST

How do I search shell command history with a text editor?

  • 772

I know that Ctrl+R let's you search command history, but it's a little primitive. Is there a way to export all my command history (not just the current terminal session, but the full history) to a text file? I could then use a text editor to search it comfortably. Or if the history file already exists, where is it?

command-line

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    From man bash:

    HISTFILE
    The name of the file in which command history is saved.
    The default value  is  ~/.bash_history.
    If unset, the command history is not saved when a shell exits.

    So, the variable HISTFILE will contain the filename where the history will be saved.

    $ echo "$HISTFILE"
/home/user/.bash_history

    You can now search for the pattern:

    $ grep "vim" "$HISTFILE"
vim foo.text
vim bar.text
vim file.txt

    As @Dennis has pointed out, if you want you can run history -a to append the command history of the running session to the $HISTFILE file. Basically the commands will be automatically appended once you close a session, history -a will do the same thing right at that instant.

    Run help history to get more idea on the history builtin itself.

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  2. The bash history is saved in your home directory ~/.bash_history.

    Basically Ctrl + R searches from this file.

    • 4

  3. Try this:

    history > output.txt
less output.txt

    Then search by typing / + searchterm

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