CODEWITHSUNDEEP
bashformathistory
Ned Schneebly
Ned Schneebly

Reputation: 186

Adding bash history time export temporarily for output?

Every once in a while I export my bash history to an external file. On occasion I would like to add export HISTTIMEFORMAT='%F %T ' so the time/date shows in the output, although it never appears in the file after I envoke the command. I know that you can permanently add the environment variables to your .bash_profile, but I just want to use it temporarily for when I use the command below. I've tried it like this:

# export HISTTIMEFORMAT='%F %T ' | grep -v "^#" $HISTFILE > ~/path/to/output

with no luck showing the time/date stamp.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 996

Answers (2)

jeberle
jeberle

Reputation: 758

Use:

HISTTIMEFORMAT='%F %T ' history | grep -v "^#" > ~/path/to/output

Note: commands that were in your history from past shells will not contain proper times unless HISTTIMEFORMAT was set to some value during these shells.

Upvotes: 1

emil
emil

Reputation: 1700

it is bash that needs the environment variable:

env HISTTIMEFORMAT='%F %T ' bash -c 'command args'

Upvotes: 1

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