get a particular line from history, bash

Question

How would I get like line 78 from history in Bash?

Like I know that I could do something along the lines of:

history | grep 78 | \
awk '{idex=2; while (idex <= NF) { printf $idex " "; idex++} print }' | \
sed '2!d; s/\s\s[0-9]*.*$//'

The text that I'm trying to get out of this is:

npm uninstall foo; npm install -g foo

Answer 1

history | sed -n "`78 {s/^ *[0-9]\{1,\}[[:space:]]*\([^ ]\)/\1/p;q;}"

if you absolutely want sed and use of history command (for example to add a "#" at the start of the line to secure any action of string) or in ksh where !78:p does not work

Answer 2

The p modifier will print any history expansion instead of executing it.

!78:p

Answer 3

To get line 78 from history in bash, run the following:

!78