[kwlug-disc] bash: HISTTIMEFORMAT

[CrankyOldBugger]

I added to my .bashrc, where I have other history options set, changed the
date format to something more Canadian, and it looks like this now:

8928  26/03/04 12:24:48 history

So that's an improvement over not having the date..


On Wed, 4 Mar 2026 at 16:52, Jason Eckert <jason.eckert at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>>> kwlug-disc mailing list
>>>>> To unsubscribe, send an email to kwlug-disc-leave at kwlug.org
>>>>> with the subject "unsubscribe", or email
>>>>> kwlug-disc-owner at kwlug.org to contact a human being.
>>>>>
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> kwlug-disc mailing list
>>>> To unsubscribe, send an email to kwlug-disc-leave at kwlug.org
>>>> with the subject "unsubscribe", or email
>>>> kwlug-disc-owner at kwlug.org to contact a human being.
>>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> kwlug-disc mailing list
>>> To unsubscribe, send an email to kwlug-disc-leave at kwlug.org
>>> with the subject "unsubscribe", or email
>>> kwlug-disc-owner at kwlug.org to contact a human being.
>>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> kwlug-disc mailing list
>> To unsubscribe, send an email to kwlug-disc-leave at kwlug.org
>> with the subject "unsubscribe", or email
>> kwlug-disc-owner at kwlug.org to contact a human being.
>>
> _______________________________________________
> kwlug-disc mailing list
> To unsubscribe, send an email to kwlug-disc-leave at kwlug.org
> with the subject "unsubscribe", or email
> kwlug-disc-owner at kwlug.org to contact a human being.
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.kwlug.org/pipermail/kwlug-disc_kwlug.org/attachments/20260304/015010c9/attachment.htm>