esc-k and similar commands

[Eric Bakken]

I have been using the esc-k and esc esc to put in commands and use command editing in hp-ux but never had to set it up... now on my workstation at home, it's not set up and i cant figure out what i have to do to set it up. I cant stand having to retype commands when i screw up, someone please help,

-Eric

[Pete Randall · Accepted solution]

In your profile/.rc file, etc., put the following:

HISTORY=$HOME/.history
set -o vi

That should do it.


Pete

[RAC_1]

You need to have HISTFILE and HISTSIZE set in your profile.

HISTFILE=~/.sh_history
HISTSIZE=1000

This wuold store your commands in .sh_history file in your home dir and will store 1000 commands.

[John Dvorchak]

The problem probably is that you have no history setup in your $HOME/.profile

Try something like this:

HISTFILE=$HOME/.sh_$LOGNAME
HISTSIZE=10000
export HISTFILE; export HISTSIZE


also don't forget to set your editor in the .profile:

# Set up the shell variables:
EDITOR=vi
export EDITOR

[Marvin Strong]

you should read the manpage for your shell.
beit ksh or sh.

You need to setup your environment.

when reading the manpage pay attention to

HISTFILE
and
EDITOR

[Bill Hassell]

There are two minimum requirements to enable the shell command history and recall: set the HISTORY variable to point to your shell's history file ($HOME/.sh_history by default) and also set the EDITOR variable to /usr/bin/vi to make sure the shell use vi syntax for recall and editing. There is one additional requirement for root: the $HISTORY must exist before it will be used. This apparently is not true for ordinary users. As root, just do this:

touch $HOME/.sh_history

The HISTSIZE variable is optional but allows you to limit/expand the maximum size of the history file. Manipulating the history file is done with fc commands but most people never use fc directly. Instead, aliases are created such as:

history='fc -l'
r='fc -e -'

I don't like typing much so I alias

h='fc -l'

and also have an hgrep alias:

hgrep='fc -l | grep -i'

[Cem Tugrul]

Eric,

an example from my root .profile as below;

HISTSIZE=1000; export HISTSIZE
HISTFILE=~/.sh_history
export HISTFILE

Good Luck,

[Eric Bakken]

thanks everyone, i got it working...