Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide:
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# Appendix K. 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. $HISTTIMEFORMAT (Bash, ver. 3.0 or later)

8. !!

9. !$

10. !#

11. !N

12. !-N

13. !STRING

14. !?STRING?

15. ^STRING^string^

Unfortunately, the Bash history tools find no use in scripting.

    #!/bin/bash
    # history.sh
    # A (vain) attempt to use the 'history' command in a script.

    history                      # No output.

    var=$(history); echo "$var"  # $var is empty.

    # History commands disabled within a script.

    bash$ ./history.sh
    (no output)

The Advancing in the Bash Shell site gives a good introduction to the use of history commands in Bash.

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