15 Powerful History Command Tricks to Supercharge Your Linux Shell

If you frequently use the Linux command line, mastering the history command can greatly improve your efficiency. Below are 15 useful usage examples.

Display timestamps with HISTTIMEFORMAT

Set the HISTTIMEFORMAT environment variable to show timestamps when you run history. The timestamps only apply to commands executed after the variable is set.

Search history with Ctrl+R

Press Ctrl+R to search through previous commands. Press Enter to execute the found command, or use the left/right arrow keys to edit it before execution.

Quickly repeat the last command

Four ways to repeat the previous command:

Press the up‑arrow key and hit Enter .

Type !! and press Enter .

Type !-1 and press Enter .

Press Ctrl+P and hit Enter .

Execute a specific command from history

To run the fourth command again, use !4:

Run a command by keyword

Enter !ps to execute the most recent command that starts with ps:

Control total history lines with HISTSIZE

Add the following two lines to .bash_profile and re‑login; the history will keep 450 entries:

Change the history file name with HISTFILE

By default history is stored in ~/.bashhistory. Adding the lines below to .bashprofile and re‑logging in will store history in .commandline_warrior instead:

Remove consecutive duplicate entries with HISTCONTROL

Set HISTCONTROL=ignoredups to skip consecutive duplicate commands.

Erase all duplicate entries with HISTCONTROL

Use HISTCONTROL=erasedups to remove all duplicate commands from the history.

Force history not to record specific commands

Set HISTCONTROL=ignorespace and start a command with a space to prevent it from being saved.

Clear all history with -c

Run history -c to erase the entire command history.

Command substitution

Use !!:$ to reuse the last argument of the previous command. The equivalent shortcut !$ works as well.

Similarly, !^ retrieves the first argument of the previous command:

Replace a specific argument for a command

Use !cp:2 to fetch the second argument of the most recent cp command:

Use !cp:$ to get the last argument of the cp command:

Disable history with HISTSIZE

Set HISTSIZE=0 to turn off command history recording.

Ignore specific commands with HISTIGNORE

Configure HISTIGNORE to skip commands like pwd, ls, and ls -ltr from being saved.

Original source: https://linuxtoy.org/archives/history-command-usage-examples.html