Linux Command: history (command execution history)

Use “history” command to get the list of the history of command execution in the terminal.

Check History

Just use the “history” command without any option to get the full history of command execution.

$ history

 2045  whatis apropos
 2046  apropos ch
 2047  apropos chm
 2048  apropos his
 2049  reset

Execute Specific Command from History

From the list, we get the serial number of the command execution. Say we want to execute the 2047th command then we have to write the exclaimation sign(!) then the number.

It will execute that specific number-

 $ !2047

apropos chm

ab (1)               - Apache HTTP server benchmarking tool
chmem (8)            - configure memory
chmod (1)            - change file mode bits
chmod (2)            - change permissions of a file
fchmod (2)           - change permissions of a file
fchmodat (2)         - change permissions of a file
redis-benchmark (1)  - Benechmark a Redis instance

Execute Specific Command from Last

To execute any specific command from the last, use exclamation and then hyphen (!-) and then the position of the command from the end.

Say we want to execute the 3rd command from the last(tail of the command execution history), then we have to execute the following command-

$ !-3
# Execute the 3rd command from last

ls -la

total 16
drwxrwxr-x  4 bigboxcode bigboxcode 4096 Jun 18 19:54 .
drwxr-xr-x  6 bigboxcode bigboxcode 4096 Jun 29 17:37 ..
drwxrwxr-x 12 bigboxcode bigboxcode 4096 Jun 16 23:17 laravel11
drwxrwxr-x  4 bigboxcode bigboxcode 4096 Jun 18 20:02 openswoole

Execute the Last Command

Use the exclamation mark twice(!!) to execute the last command-

$ !!

ls -la

total 16
drwxrwxr-x  4 bigboxcode bigboxcode 4096 Jun 18 19:54 .
drwxr-xr-x  6 bigboxcode bigboxcode 4096 Jun 29 17:37 ..
drwxrwxr-x 12 bigboxcode bigboxcode 4096 Jun 16 23:17 laravel11
drwxrwxr-x  4 bigboxcode bigboxcode 4096 Jun 18 20:02 openswoole

Search Command in History

We can also search commands in the history. Type CTRL + R to start the search.

Then we just type what we are searching for-

$ CTRL + R

(reverse-i-search)`chmod': chmod 775 www/test/

Clear Command History

To clear the command history completely, use the “-c” flag with history-

$ history -c

# This will clear the full commad history

Omit Command from History

To omit some command execution from history add a space before the command. Add a space before the command will ignore it from history-

$ pwd

# Note: there is a space before the command "pwd"