History Commands
Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide:
PrevNext

Appendix F. History Commands

The Bash shell provides command-line tools for editing and manipulating a user's command history. This is primarily a convenience, a means of saving keystrokes.

Bash history commands:

  1. history

  2. fc

bash$ history
   1  mount /mnt/cdrom
    2  cd /mnt/cdrom
    3  ls
     ...

Internal variables associated with Bash history commands:

  1. $HISTCMD

  2. $HISTCONTROL

  3. $HISTIGNORE

  4. $HISTFILE

  5. $HISTFILESIZE

  6. $HISTSIZE

  7. !!

  8. !$

  9. !#

  10. !N

  11. !-N

  12. !STRING

  13. !?STRING?

  14. ^STRING^string^

Unfortunately, the Bash history tools find no use in scripting. 
#!/bin/bash
# history.sh
# Attempt to use 'history' command in a script.

history

# Script produces no output.
# History commands do not work within a script.

bash$ ./history.sh
(no output)

PrevHomeNext
Localization A Sample .bashrc File