Managing shell history with `historian`

manage-shell-history.md

Managing shell history with historian

historian is a command-line utility for managing shell history using an SQLite database.

~/.bash_history is deduped and imported into a database.

Setup

1. Add to PATH

   export PATH="$PATH:/Users/jerry/historian"
   
   

   Alternatively, you can set up an alias for it

   alias hist="/Users/jerry/historian/hist"
   

2. Add hist import to your .profile (assuming hist is already in your path):

   echo hist import >> ~/.profile
   

   This will import your .bash_history every time you launch a new shell.

Other commands:

1. Show config

   hist config
   

2. Search (detailed)

   hist search nvm
   

3. Search (shorthand)

   hist /nvm
   

4. View log

   hist log
   

Pitfalls

• Live like your db file could be corrupted at any time.
• Be careful of running specially crafted hist commands against ~/.bash_history files.