history.sh

# source
https://www.facebook.com/notes/%D7%93%D7%96%D7%90%D6%B7%D7%A0%D7%90%D6%B7%D7%98%D7%94%D7%A2%D7%9F-%D7%9E%D7%99%D7%99/aachen-style-local-history-or-never-forget-what-you-did-ever-again/10152290882464430

This comes from Carmen Heger and Sasa Hasan, by way of Aachen, where Arne Mauser was the apparent originator. Please feel free to share this but cite them (not me, unless you want to cite this specific note). If you want to skip to the instructions they're at the bottom.

The idea is a .history file is created in every directory you work in with the list of all the commands you typed (except for a few that match a list of boring stuff like ls). 

This is if you want to save yourself the trouble of cut-and-pasting into a README in each directory. I still do that, actually, but this functions as a readme of last resort. It's also great for seeing what steps others have done if you're trying to debug their inability to reproduce your results.

example:

[jonmay@Jonathan-Mays-MacBook-Pro demo]$ echo "README: this is a demonstration"
[jonmay@Jonathan-Mays-MacBook-Pro demo]$ time
[jonmay@Jonathan-Mays-MacBook-Pro demo]$ whoami
[jonmay@Jonathan-Mays-MacBook-Pro demo]$ mkdir foo
[jonmay@Jonathan-Mays-MacBook-Pro demo]$ cd foo
[jonmay@Jonathan-Mays-MacBook-Pro foo]$ echo "README: this is where i'm going to do my secret work"
[jonmay@Jonathan-Mays-MacBook-Pro foo]$ for i in `seq 1 10`; do echo $i $((i/2)); done | sed s'/0/h/g' > blarg
[jonmay@Jonathan-Mays-MacBook-Pro foo]$ cd ..
[jonmay@Jonathan-Mays-MacBook-Pro demo]$ cat .history
2014-01-16.17-39-12.Jonathan-Mays-MacBook-Pro.local echo "README: this is a demonstration"
2014-01-16.17-39-16.Jonathan-Mays-MacBook-Pro.local time 
2014-01-16.17-39-20.Jonathan-Mays-MacBook-Pro.local whoami
2014-01-16.17-39-26.Jonathan-Mays-MacBook-Pro.local mkdir foo
[jonmay@Jonathan-Mays-MacBook-Pro demo]$ cat foo/.history
2014-01-16.17-39-43.Jonathan-Mays-MacBook-Pro.local echo "README: this is where i'm going to do my secret work"
2014-01-16.17-40-41.Jonathan-Mays-MacBook-Pro.local for i in `seq 1 10`; do echo $i $((i/2)); done | sed s'/0/h/g' > blarg

Instructions: Put this in your bashrc/bash_profile (i'm never clear on which one, even after reading this http://www.joshstaiger.org/archives/2005/07/bash_profile_vs.html)

# awesome aachen history stuff
# what not to report on
alias useHistory='grep -v "^ls$\|^ll$\|^l$\|^dir$\|^cd \|^h$\|^gh$\|^h \|^bg$\|^fg$\|^qsm$\|^quser$\|^cStat\|^note \|^mutt\|^std " | wc -l'
# convenience cmd for searching: h blah => anything matching blah in current local history
alias h='cat .history | grep --binary-file=text '

# the meat
function myLocalHistory()
{
   # if you've got permission
   if [ `ls -ld "$PWD" | awk '{print $3}'` == "$USER" ] ; then
       # steal the last line from history
       HISTORYLINE=`history | tail -1 | sed 's:^ *[0-9]* *::g'`
       # filter through the alias above. append the date and computer name and add it to the local history
       if [ `echo $HISTORYLINE | useHistory` == 1 ] ; then
           (((date +%F.%H-%M-%S.;uname -n) | tr -d '\n' ; echo " $HISTORYLINE") >>.history) 2>/dev/null
       fi
   fi
}
# always run it
export PROMPT_COMMAND="myLocalHistory"