fish-shell/doc_src/cmds/history.rst

.. _cmd-history:

history - show and manipulate command history
=============================================

Synopsis
--------

.. synopsis::

    history [search] [--show-time] [--case-sensitive]
                     [--exact | --prefix | --contains] [--max N] [--null] [--reverse]
                     [SEARCH_STRING ...]
    history delete [--case-sensitive]
                   [--exact | --prefix | --contains] SEARCH_STRING ...
    history merge
    history save
    history clear
    history clear-session
    history append COMMAND ...

Description
-----------

``history`` is used to search, delete, and otherwise manipulate the :ref:`history of interactive commands <history-search>`.

The following operations (sub-commands) are available:

**search**
    Returns history items matching the search string. If no search string is provided it returns all history items. This is the default operation if no other operation is specified. You only have to explicitly say ``history search`` if you wish to search for one of the subcommands. The ``--contains`` search option will be used if you don't specify a different search option. Entries are ordered newest to oldest unless you use the ``--reverse`` flag. If stdout is attached to a tty the output will be piped through your pager by the history function. The history builtin simply writes the results to stdout.

**delete**
    Deletes history items. The ``--contains`` search option will be used if you don't specify a different search option. If you don't specify ``--exact`` a prompt will be displayed before any items are deleted asking you which entries are to be deleted. You can enter the word "all" to delete all matching entries. You can enter a single ID (the number in square brackets) to delete just that single entry. You can enter more than one ID, or an ID range separated by a space to delete multiple entries. Just press [enter] to not delete anything. Note that the interactive delete behavior is a feature of the history function. The history builtin only supports ``--exact --case-sensitive`` deletion.

**merge**
    Immediately incorporates history changes from other sessions. Ordinarily ``fish`` ignores history changes from sessions started after the current one. This command applies those changes immediately.

**save**
    Immediately writes all changes to the history file. The shell automatically saves the history file; this option is provided for internal use and should not normally need to be used by the user.

**clear**
    Clears the history file. A prompt is displayed before the history is erased asking you to confirm you really want to clear all history unless ``builtin history`` is used.

**clear-session**
    Clears the history file from all activity of the current session. Note: If ``history merge`` or ``builtin history merge`` is run in a session, only the history after this will be erased.

**append**
    Appends commands to the history without needing to execute them.

The following options are available:

These flags can appear before or immediately after one of the sub-commands listed above.

**-C** or **--case-sensitive**
    Does a case-sensitive search. The default is case-insensitive. Note that prior to fish 2.4.0 the default was case-sensitive.

**-c** or **--contains**
    Searches items in the history that contain the specified text string. This is the default for the **--search** flag. This is not currently supported by the **delete** subcommand.

**-e** or **--exact**
    Searches or deletes items in the history that exactly match the specified text string. This is the default for the **delete** subcommand. Note that the match is case-insensitive by default. If you really want an exact match, including letter case, you must use the **-C** or **--case-sensitive** flag.

**-p** or **--prefix**
    Searches items in the history that begin with the specified text string. This is not currently supported by the **delete** subcommand.

**-t** or **--show-time**
    Prepends each history entry with the date and time the entry was recorded. By default it uses the strftime format ``# %c%n``. You can specify another format; e.g., ``--show-time="%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S "`` or ``--show-time="%a%I%p"``. The short option, **-t**, doesn't accept a strftime format string; it only uses the default format. Any strftime format is allowed, including ``%s`` to get the raw UNIX seconds since the epoch.

**-z** or **--null**
    Causes history entries written by the search operations to be terminated by a NUL character rather than a newline. This allows the output to be processed by ``read -z`` to correctly handle multiline history entries.

**-**\*NUMBER* **-n** *NUMBER* or **--max** *NUMBER*
    Limits the matched history items to the first *NUMBER* matching entries. This is only valid for ``history search``.

**-R** or **--reverse**
    Causes the history search results to be ordered oldest to newest. Which is the order used by most shells. The default is newest to oldest.

**-h** or **--help**
    Displays help for this command.

Example
-------


::

    history clear
    # Deletes all history items

    history search --contains "foo"
    # Outputs a list of all previous commands containing the string "foo".

    history delete --prefix "foo"
    # Interactively deletes commands which start with "foo" from the history.
    # You can select more than one entry by entering their IDs separated by a space.


Customizing the name of the history file
----------------------------------------

By default interactive commands are logged to ``$XDG_DATA_HOME/fish/fish_history`` (typically ``~/.local/share/fish/fish_history``).

You can set the ``fish_history`` variable to another name for the current shell session. The default value (when the variable is unset) is ``fish`` which corresponds to ``$XDG_DATA_HOME/fish/fish_history``. If you set it to e.g. ``fun``, the history would be written to ``$XDG_DATA_HOME/fish/fun_history``. An empty string means history will not be stored at all. This is similar to the private session features in web browsers.

You can change ``fish_history`` at any time (by using ``set -x fish_history "session_name"``) and it will take effect right away. If you set it to ``"default"``, it will use the default session name (which is ``"fish"``).

Other shells such as bash and zsh use a variable named ``HISTFILE`` for a similar purpose. Fish uses a different name to avoid conflicts and signal that the behavior is different (session name instead of a file path). Also, if you set the var to anything other than ``fish`` or ``default`` it will inhibit importing the bash history. That's because the most common use case for this feature is to avoid leaking private or sensitive history when giving a presentation.

Notes
-----

If you specify both **--prefix** and **--contains** the last flag seen is used.

Note that for backwards compatibility each subcommand can also be specified as a long option. For example, rather than ``history search`` you can type ``history --search``. Those long options are deprecated and will be removed in a future release.
docs: Add labels to all commands This allows us to use :ref: references, which don't require hardcoding it as html [ci skip] 2019-03-31 17:05:09 +08:00			`.. _cmd-history:`

doc: homogenize commands titles 2020-03-31 23:37:38 +08:00			`history - show and manipulate command history`
Fix command section separator line lengths 2019-01-03 12:10:47 +08:00			`=============================================`
Switch command docs from \section to reStructuredText 2018-12-17 09:39:33 +08:00
Migrate the 'synopsis' sections to .rst format 2018-12-18 09:58:24 +08:00			`Synopsis`
			`--------`
Copy doc_src to sphinx_doc_src and add a TOC 2018-12-17 05:08:41 +08:00
docs synopsis: add HTML highlighing and automate manpage markup Recent synopsis changes move from literal code blocks to [RST line blocks]. This does not translate well to HTML: it's not rendered in monospace, so aligment is lost. Additionally, we don't get syntax highlighting in HTML, which adds differences to our code samples which are highlighted. We hard-wrap synopsis lines (like code blocks). To align continuation lines in manpages we need [backslashes in weird places]. Combined with the *, , and `` markup, it's a bit hard to get the alignment right. Fix these by moving synopsis sources back to code blocks and compute HTML syntax highlighting and manpage markup with a custom Sphinx extension. The new Pygments lexer can tokenize a synopsis and assign the various highlighting roles, which closely matches fish's syntax highlighing: - command/keyword (dark blue) - parameter (light blue) - operator like and/or/not/&&/\|\| (cyan) - grammar metacharacter (black) For manpage output, we don't project the fish syntax highlighting but follow the markup convention in GNU's man(1): bold text type exactly as shown. italic text replace with appropriate argument. To make it easy to separate these two automatically, formalize that (italic) placeholders must be uppercase; while all lowercase text is interpreted literally (so rendered bold). This makes manpages more consistent, see string-join(1) and and(1). Implementation notes: Since we want manpage formatting but Sphinx's Pygments highlighing plugin does not support manpage output, add our custom "synopsis" directive. This directive parses differently when manpage output is specified. This means that the HTML and manpage build processes must not share a cache, because the parsed doctrees are cached. Work around this by using separate cache locations for build targets "sphinx-docs" (which creates HTML) and "sphinx-manpages". A better solution would be to only override Sphinx's ManualPageBuilder but that would take a bit more code (ideally we could override ManualPageWriter but Sphinx 4.3.2 doesn't really support that). --- Alternative solution: stick with line blocks but use roles like :command: or :option: (or custom ones). While this would make it possible to produce HTML that is consistent with code blocks (by adding a bit of CSS), the source would look uglier and is harder to maintain. (Let's say we want to add custom formatting to the [\|] metacharacters in HTML. This is much easier with the proposed patch.) --- [RST line blocks]: https://docutils.sourceforge.io/docs/ref/rst/restructuredtext.html#line-blocks [backslashes in weird places]: https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/pull/8626#discussion_r782837750 2022-01-09 22:09:46 +08:00			`.. synopsis::`

			`history [search] [--show-time] [--case-sensitive]`
docs synopsis: make all placeholder arguments uppercase man(1) uses lowercase placeholders but we usually don't. Additionally, the new synopsis autoformatting only recognizes placeholders if they are uppercase. Use uppercase for all placeholders. 2022-01-17 12:29:49 +08:00			`[--exact \| --prefix \| --contains] [--max N] [--null] [--reverse]`
docs synopsis: add HTML highlighing and automate manpage markup Recent synopsis changes move from literal code blocks to [RST line blocks]. This does not translate well to HTML: it's not rendered in monospace, so aligment is lost. Additionally, we don't get syntax highlighting in HTML, which adds differences to our code samples which are highlighted. We hard-wrap synopsis lines (like code blocks). To align continuation lines in manpages we need [backslashes in weird places]. Combined with the *, , and `` markup, it's a bit hard to get the alignment right. Fix these by moving synopsis sources back to code blocks and compute HTML syntax highlighting and manpage markup with a custom Sphinx extension. The new Pygments lexer can tokenize a synopsis and assign the various highlighting roles, which closely matches fish's syntax highlighing: - command/keyword (dark blue) - parameter (light blue) - operator like and/or/not/&&/\|\| (cyan) - grammar metacharacter (black) For manpage output, we don't project the fish syntax highlighting but follow the markup convention in GNU's man(1): bold text type exactly as shown. italic text replace with appropriate argument. To make it easy to separate these two automatically, formalize that (italic) placeholders must be uppercase; while all lowercase text is interpreted literally (so rendered bold). This makes manpages more consistent, see string-join(1) and and(1). Implementation notes: Since we want manpage formatting but Sphinx's Pygments highlighing plugin does not support manpage output, add our custom "synopsis" directive. This directive parses differently when manpage output is specified. This means that the HTML and manpage build processes must not share a cache, because the parsed doctrees are cached. Work around this by using separate cache locations for build targets "sphinx-docs" (which creates HTML) and "sphinx-manpages". A better solution would be to only override Sphinx's ManualPageBuilder but that would take a bit more code (ideally we could override ManualPageWriter but Sphinx 4.3.2 doesn't really support that). --- Alternative solution: stick with line blocks but use roles like :command: or :option: (or custom ones). While this would make it possible to produce HTML that is consistent with code blocks (by adding a bit of CSS), the source would look uglier and is harder to maintain. (Let's say we want to add custom formatting to the [\|] metacharacters in HTML. This is much easier with the proposed patch.) --- [RST line blocks]: https://docutils.sourceforge.io/docs/ref/rst/restructuredtext.html#line-blocks [backslashes in weird places]: https://github.com/fish-shell/fish-shell/pull/8626#discussion_r782837750 2022-01-09 22:09:46 +08:00			`[SEARCH_STRING ...]`
			`history delete [--case-sensitive]`
			`[--exact \| --prefix \| --contains] SEARCH_STRING ...`
			`history merge`
			`history save`
			`history clear`
			`history clear-session`
add history append subcommand 2024-04-13 18:21:51 +08:00			`history append COMMAND ...`
Copy doc_src to sphinx_doc_src and add a TOC 2018-12-17 05:08:41 +08:00
Convert \\subsection sections into rst format 2018-12-19 10:44:30 +08:00			`Description`
Fix command section separator line lengths 2019-01-03 12:10:47 +08:00			`-----------`
Copy doc_src to sphinx_doc_src and add a TOC 2018-12-17 05:08:41 +08:00
doc: fix links pointing to history-search section [ci skip] 2019-10-17 14:49:42 +08:00			``history`` is used to search, delete, and otherwise manipulate the :ref:`history of interactive commands <history-search>`.
Copy doc_src to sphinx_doc_src and add a TOC 2018-12-17 05:08:41 +08:00
			`The following operations (sub-commands) are available:`

docs: standardise on definition lists for options Harmonizes the option listing including formatting in a similar manner to the synopsis of each entry. 2022-03-11 23:56:20 +08:00			`search`
			Returns history items matching the search string. If no search string is provided it returns all history items. This is the default operation if no other operation is specified. You only have to explicitly say ``history search`` if you wish to search for one of the subcommands. The ``--contains`` search option will be used if you don't specify a different search option. Entries are ordered newest to oldest unless you use the ``--reverse`` flag. If stdout is attached to a tty the output will be piped through your pager by the history function. The history builtin simply writes the results to stdout.
Copy doc_src to sphinx_doc_src and add a TOC 2018-12-17 05:08:41 +08:00
docs: standardise on definition lists for options Harmonizes the option listing including formatting in a similar manner to the synopsis of each entry. 2022-03-11 23:56:20 +08:00			`delete`
history: Allow deleting ranges This allows giving a range like "5..7". It works in combination with more (including overlapping) ranges or single indices. Fixes #9736 2023-06-10 21:23:29 +08:00			Deletes history items. The ``--contains`` search option will be used if you don't specify a different search option. If you don't specify ``--exact`` a prompt will be displayed before any items are deleted asking you which entries are to be deleted. You can enter the word "all" to delete all matching entries. You can enter a single ID (the number in square brackets) to delete just that single entry. You can enter more than one ID, or an ID range separated by a space to delete multiple entries. Just press [enter] to not delete anything. Note that the interactive delete behavior is a feature of the history function. The history builtin only supports ``--exact --case-sensitive`` deletion.
Copy doc_src to sphinx_doc_src and add a TOC 2018-12-17 05:08:41 +08:00
docs: standardise on definition lists for options Harmonizes the option listing including formatting in a similar manner to the synopsis of each entry. 2022-03-11 23:56:20 +08:00			`merge`
			Immediately incorporates history changes from other sessions. Ordinarily ``fish`` ignores history changes from sessions started after the current one. This command applies those changes immediately.
Copy doc_src to sphinx_doc_src and add a TOC 2018-12-17 05:08:41 +08:00
docs: standardise on definition lists for options Harmonizes the option listing including formatting in a similar manner to the synopsis of each entry. 2022-03-11 23:56:20 +08:00			`save`
			`Immediately writes all changes to the history file. The shell automatically saves the history file; this option is provided for internal use and should not normally need to be used by the user.`
Copy doc_src to sphinx_doc_src and add a TOC 2018-12-17 05:08:41 +08:00
docs: standardise on definition lists for options Harmonizes the option listing including formatting in a similar manner to the synopsis of each entry. 2022-03-11 23:56:20 +08:00			`clear`
			Clears the history file. A prompt is displayed before the history is erased asking you to confirm you really want to clear all history unless ``builtin history`` is used.
Copy doc_src to sphinx_doc_src and add a TOC 2018-12-17 05:08:41 +08:00
docs: standardise on definition lists for options Harmonizes the option listing including formatting in a similar manner to the synopsis of each entry. 2022-03-11 23:56:20 +08:00			`clear-session`
			Clears the history file from all activity of the current session. Note: If ``history merge`` or ``builtin history merge`` is run in a session, only the history after this will be erased.
Adds sub-command clear-session to history command. Issue #5791 This clears all history for the current session. Documentation and autocompletion for the new subcommand is added. 2021-10-18 10:27:46 +08:00
add history append subcommand 2024-04-13 18:21:51 +08:00			`append`
			`Appends commands to the history without needing to execute them.`

Copy doc_src to sphinx_doc_src and add a TOC 2018-12-17 05:08:41 +08:00			`The following options are available:`

			`These flags can appear before or immediately after one of the sub-commands listed above.`

docs: standardise on definition lists for options Harmonizes the option listing including formatting in a similar manner to the synopsis of each entry. 2022-03-11 23:56:20 +08:00			`-C or --case-sensitive`
			`Does a case-sensitive search. The default is case-insensitive. Note that prior to fish 2.4.0 the default was case-sensitive.`
Copy doc_src to sphinx_doc_src and add a TOC 2018-12-17 05:08:41 +08:00
docs: standardise on definition lists for options Harmonizes the option listing including formatting in a similar manner to the synopsis of each entry. 2022-03-11 23:56:20 +08:00			`-c or --contains`
			`Searches items in the history that contain the specified text string. This is the default for the --search flag. This is not currently supported by the delete subcommand.`
Copy doc_src to sphinx_doc_src and add a TOC 2018-12-17 05:08:41 +08:00
docs: standardise on definition lists for options Harmonizes the option listing including formatting in a similar manner to the synopsis of each entry. 2022-03-11 23:56:20 +08:00			`-e or --exact`
			`Searches or deletes items in the history that exactly match the specified text string. This is the default for the delete subcommand. Note that the match is case-insensitive by default. If you really want an exact match, including letter case, you must use the -C or --case-sensitive flag.`
Copy doc_src to sphinx_doc_src and add a TOC 2018-12-17 05:08:41 +08:00
docs: standardise on definition lists for options Harmonizes the option listing including formatting in a similar manner to the synopsis of each entry. 2022-03-11 23:56:20 +08:00			`-p or --prefix`
			`Searches items in the history that begin with the specified text string. This is not currently supported by the delete subcommand.`
Copy doc_src to sphinx_doc_src and add a TOC 2018-12-17 05:08:41 +08:00
docs: standardise on definition lists for options Harmonizes the option listing including formatting in a similar manner to the synopsis of each entry. 2022-03-11 23:56:20 +08:00			`-t or --show-time`
			Prepends each history entry with the date and time the entry was recorded. By default it uses the strftime format ``# %c%n``. You can specify another format; e.g., ``--show-time="%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S "`` or ``--show-time="%a%I%p"``. The short option, -t, doesn't accept a strftime format string; it only uses the default format. Any strftime format is allowed, including ``%s`` to get the raw UNIX seconds since the epoch.
Copy doc_src to sphinx_doc_src and add a TOC 2018-12-17 05:08:41 +08:00
docs: standardise on definition lists for options Harmonizes the option listing including formatting in a similar manner to the synopsis of each entry. 2022-03-11 23:56:20 +08:00			`-z or --null`
			Causes history entries written by the search operations to be terminated by a NUL character rather than a newline. This allows the output to be processed by ``read -z`` to correctly handle multiline history entries.
Copy doc_src to sphinx_doc_src and add a TOC 2018-12-17 05:08:41 +08:00
docs: standardise on definition lists for options Harmonizes the option listing including formatting in a similar manner to the synopsis of each entry. 2022-03-11 23:56:20 +08:00			`-\NUMBER -n NUMBER or --max NUMBER`
			Limits the matched history items to the first NUMBER matching entries. This is only valid for ``history search``.
Copy doc_src to sphinx_doc_src and add a TOC 2018-12-17 05:08:41 +08:00
docs: standardise on definition lists for options Harmonizes the option listing including formatting in a similar manner to the synopsis of each entry. 2022-03-11 23:56:20 +08:00			`-R or --reverse`
			`Causes the history search results to be ordered oldest to newest. Which is the order used by most shells. The default is newest to oldest.`
Copy doc_src to sphinx_doc_src and add a TOC 2018-12-17 05:08:41 +08:00
docs: standardise on definition lists for options Harmonizes the option listing including formatting in a similar manner to the synopsis of each entry. 2022-03-11 23:56:20 +08:00			`-h or --help`
			`Displays help for this command.`
Copy doc_src to sphinx_doc_src and add a TOC 2018-12-17 05:08:41 +08:00
Convert \\subsection sections into rst format 2018-12-19 10:44:30 +08:00			`Example`
Fix command section separator line lengths 2019-01-03 12:10:47 +08:00			`-------`
Copy doc_src to sphinx_doc_src and add a TOC 2018-12-17 05:08:41 +08:00


Switch \fish sections to rst format 2018-12-19 11:14:04 +08:00			`::`

			`history clear`
			`# Deletes all history items`
add history append subcommand 2024-04-13 18:21:51 +08:00
Switch \fish sections to rst format 2018-12-19 11:14:04 +08:00			`history search --contains "foo"`
			`# Outputs a list of all previous commands containing the string "foo".`
add history append subcommand 2024-04-13 18:21:51 +08:00
Switch \fish sections to rst format 2018-12-19 11:14:04 +08:00			`history delete --prefix "foo"`
			`# Interactively deletes commands which start with "foo" from the history.`
			`# You can select more than one entry by entering their IDs separated by a space.`

Copy doc_src to sphinx_doc_src and add a TOC 2018-12-17 05:08:41 +08:00
Convert \\subsection sections into rst format 2018-12-19 10:44:30 +08:00			`Customizing the name of the history file`
Fix command section separator line lengths 2019-01-03 12:10:47 +08:00			`----------------------------------------`
Copy doc_src to sphinx_doc_src and add a TOC 2018-12-17 05:08:41 +08:00
Switch backticks to double backticks for rst compatibility 2018-12-20 04:02:45 +08:00			By default interactive commands are logged to ``$XDG_DATA_HOME/fish/fish_history`` (typically ``~/.local/share/fish/fish_history``).
Copy doc_src to sphinx_doc_src and add a TOC 2018-12-17 05:08:41 +08:00
Switch backticks to double backticks for rst compatibility 2018-12-20 04:02:45 +08:00			You can set the ``fish_history`` variable to another name for the current shell session. The default value (when the variable is unset) is ``fish`` which corresponds to ``$XDG_DATA_HOME/fish/fish_history``. If you set it to e.g. ``fun``, the history would be written to ``$XDG_DATA_HOME/fish/fun_history``. An empty string means history will not be stored at all. This is similar to the private session features in web browsers.
Copy doc_src to sphinx_doc_src and add a TOC 2018-12-17 05:08:41 +08:00
Switch backticks to double backticks for rst compatibility 2018-12-20 04:02:45 +08:00			You can change ``fish_history`` at any time (by using ``set -x fish_history "session_name"``) and it will take effect right away. If you set it to ``"default"``, it will use the default session name (which is ``"fish"``).
Copy doc_src to sphinx_doc_src and add a TOC 2018-12-17 05:08:41 +08:00
Switch backticks to double backticks for rst compatibility 2018-12-20 04:02:45 +08:00			Other shells such as bash and zsh use a variable named ``HISTFILE`` for a similar purpose. Fish uses a different name to avoid conflicts and signal that the behavior is different (session name instead of a file path). Also, if you set the var to anything other than ``fish`` or ``default`` it will inhibit importing the bash history. That's because the most common use case for this feature is to avoid leaking private or sensitive history when giving a presentation.
Copy doc_src to sphinx_doc_src and add a TOC 2018-12-17 05:08:41 +08:00
Convert \\subsection sections into rst format 2018-12-19 10:44:30 +08:00			`Notes`
Fix command section separator line lengths 2019-01-03 12:10:47 +08:00			`-----`
Copy doc_src to sphinx_doc_src and add a TOC 2018-12-17 05:08:41 +08:00
History: adjust description entries 2021-12-18 07:44:05 +08:00			`If you specify both --prefix and --contains the last flag seen is used.`
Copy doc_src to sphinx_doc_src and add a TOC 2018-12-17 05:08:41 +08:00
Switch backticks to double backticks for rst compatibility 2018-12-20 04:02:45 +08:00			Note that for backwards compatibility each subcommand can also be specified as a long option. For example, rather than ``history search`` you can type ``history --search``. Those long options are deprecated and will be removed in a future release.