Bash History Builtins

Bash provides two builtin commands which manipulate the history list and history file.

fc

fc [-e ename] [-lnr] [first] [last]
fc -s [pat=rep] [command]

The first form selects a range of commands from first to last from the history list and displays or edits and re-executes them. Both first and last may be specified as a string (to locate the most recent command beginning with that string) or as a number (an index into the history list, where a negative number is used as an offset from the current command number).

When listing, a first or last of 0 is equivalent to -1 and -0 is equivalent to the current command (usually the fc command); otherwise 0 is equivalent to -1 and -0 is invalid.

If last is not specified, it is set to the current command for listing and to first otherwise. If first is not specified, it is set to the previous command for editing and −16 for listing.

If the -l flag is supplied, the commands are listed on standard output. The -n flag suppresses the command numbers when listing. The -r flag reverses the order of the listing.

Otherwise, fc invokes the editor named by ename on a file containing those commands. If ename is not supplied, fc uses the value of the following variable expansion: ${FCEDIT:-${EDITOR:-vi}}. This says to use the value of the FCEDIT variable if set, or the value of the EDITOR variable if that is set, or vi if neither is set. When editing is complete, fc reads the file of edited commands and echoes and executes them.

In the second form, fc re-executes command after replacing each instance of pat in the selected command with rep. command is interpreted the same as first above.

A useful alias to use with the fc command is r='fc -s', so that typing ‘r cc’ runs the last command beginning with cc and typing ‘r’ re-executes the last command (see Aliases).

If the first form is used, the return value is zero unless an invalid option is encountered or first or last specify history lines out of range. When editing and re-executing a file of commands, the return value is the value of the last command executed or failure if an error occurs with the temporary file. If the second form is used, the return status is that of the re-executed command, unless command does not specify a valid history entry, in which case fc returns a non-zero status.

history

history [n]
history -c
history -d offset
history -d start-end
history [-anrw] [filename]
history -ps arg

With no options, display the history list with numbers. Entries prefixed with a ‘*’ have been modified. An argument of n lists only the last n entries. If the shell variable HISTTIMEFORMAT is set and not null, it is used as a format string for strftime(3) to display the time stamp associated with each displayed history entry. If history uses HISTTIMEFORMAT, it does not print an intervening space between the formatted time stamp and the history entry.

Options, if supplied, have the following meanings:

-c

Clear the history list. This may be combined with the other options to replace the history list.

-d offset

Delete the history entry at position offset. If offset is positive, it should be specified as it appears when the history is displayed. If offset is negative, it is interpreted as relative to one greater than the last history position, so negative indices count back from the end of the history, and an index of ‘-1’ refers to the current history -d command.

-d start-end

Delete the range of history entries between positions start and end, inclusive. Positive and negative values for start and end are interpreted as described above.

-a

Append the "new" history lines to the history file. These are history lines entered since the beginning of the current Bash session, but not already appended to the history file.

-n

Read the history lines not already read from the history file and add them to the current history list. These are lines appended to the history file since the beginning of the current Bash session.

-r

Read the history file and append its contents to the history list.

-w

Write the current history list to the history file, overwriting the history file.

-p

Perform history substitution on the args and display the result on the standard output, without storing the results in the history list.

-s

Add the args to the end of the history list as a single entry. The last command in the history list is removed before adding the args.

If a filename argument is supplied with any of the -w, -r, -a, or -n options, Bash uses filename as the history file. If not, it uses the value of the HISTFILE variable. If HISTFILE is unset or null, these options have no effect.

If the HISTTIMEFORMAT variable is set, history writes the time stamp information associated with each history entry to the history file, marked with the history comment character as described above. When the history file is read, lines beginning with the history comment character followed immediately by a digit are interpreted as timestamps for the following history entry.

The return value is 0 unless an invalid option is encountered, an error occurs while reading or writing the history file, an invalid offset or range is supplied as an argument to -d, or the history expansion supplied as an argument to -p fails.