[kwlug-disc] bash: HISTTIMEFORMAT

[Jason Eckert]

That option doesn't work in bash's history built-in function. You'd have to
use zsh instead.

On Wed, 4 Mar 2026 at 11:37, Alex Kleider via kwlug-disc <
kwlug-disc at kwlug.org> wrote:

> Doesn't seem to work on my Debian XFCE system (a release or two ago.)
>  $ history -i
> bash: history: -i: invalid option
> history: usage: history [-c] [-d offset] [n] or history -anrw [filename]
> or history -ps arg [arg...]
>
> Alex Kleider  (set from my current gizmo)
>
> On Wednesday, March 4th, 2026 at 6:02 AM, Jason Eckert <
> jason.eckert at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Like Raymond, the 'history -i' command has been my go-to for ages.
> I switched to zsh long ago for aesthetic consistency... it matches zfs,
> zswap, etc… I’m nothing if not alphabetically aligned.
>
> On Wed, 4 Mar 2026 at 08:52, Raymond Chen <raymondchen625 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Very nice! BTW, in zsh it's `history -i`.
>>
>> On Wed, Mar 4, 2026 at 8:37 AM CrankyOldBugger <crankyoldbugger at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Nice one!
>>>
>>> On Wed, 4 Mar 2026 at 03:11, Chris Frey <cdfrey at foursquare.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> It turns out that by setting the environment variable HISTTIMEFORMAT
>>>> on startup to something like "%Y-%m-%dT%T " bash will both display
>>>> the timestamp of all commands when you use the 'history' command,
>>>> but also store the timestamps in the .bash_history file.
>>>>
>>>> Now I have an automatic trail of timed breadcrumbs in case I need it,
>>>> for all my shell work.
>>>>
>>>> Just passing along the tip.
>>>>
>>>> - Chris
>>>>
>>>>
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