Work on the Command Line Part 1 Use and edit command history

In this lesson, you’ll learn how to list, search, and interactively navigate your Bash command history to boost your command-line productivity.

1. List Your Bash History

Bash keeps track of every command entered in a session. To display your entire session history, use:

history

Example output:

 1  history
 2  ls
 3  ls -la
 4  test
 5  clear
 6  cd
 7  pwd
 8  clear
 9  sudo systemctl reboot
10  ls -la
11  clear

2. Search Commands with grep

To filter history for specific keywords, pipe the output to grep. For example, to find all sudo invocations:

history | grep sudo

Output:

9  sudo systemctl reboot

3. Locate the .bash_history File

Bash writes your commands to ~/.bash_history when you log out. To view hidden files in your home directory:

ls -la /home/aaron

Sample listing:

drwx------ 14 aaron aaron  4096 Dec  5 13:52 .
drwxr-xr-x  3 root  root   4096 Dec  5 13:43 ..
-rw-------  1 aaron aaron   112 Dec  5 13:51 .bash_history
-rw-r--r--  1 aaron aaron    18 Nov 24 08:20 .bash_logout
-rw-r--r--  1 aaron aaron   141 Nov 24 08:20 .bash_profile
-rw-r--r--  1 aaron aaron   492 Nov 24 08:20 .bashrc
...

You can open ~/.bash_history in any text editor or display it with:

cat ~/.bash_history

4. Navigate History Interactively

Bash lets you recall and edit past commands right in the prompt. Use these keystrokes:

When you find the desired entry, press Enter to re-execute or edit it inline.

Additional Resources

• GNU Bash Reference Manual
• Bash Command History Section
• Bash Prompt Customization