[kwlug-disc] bash: HISTTIMEFORMAT

[Alex Kleider]

Would you be willing to share the relevant parts of your .bashrc/
a

Alex Kleider (set from my current gizmo)

On Wednesday, March 4th, 2026 at 9:29 AM, CrankyOldBugger <crankyoldbugger at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
>>>>>>>
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>>>>>
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