Oops! I edited my .history file, now it doesnt work

[Travis Rebok]

I edited my shell command history file (.history). Now when I try to pull up my old commands from the command line all I get is junk. Basically it looks like all of the commands string together. Obviously I screwed the file up when I edited it. Is there a way that I can fix the file so that I will be able to retrieve my old commands again? I'm on On HP10.20

[melvyn burnard]

recover from a backup, if ther e is a recent one.
Otherwise, if you know what and where you edited, try un-editing it.
Ohterwise, you will have to remove it and start again.

[steven Burgess_2]

Hi

What happens if you try

fc -l

Regards

Steve

[S.K. Chan]

I don't think so. You'll have to trim it or "zeroed" it. To trim it you have to know roughly where in the file is was broken, for example simply doing ..
$ tail -50 .sh_history>.sh_history.good
==> Anything above the last 50 lines are probably "bad".
$ mv .sh_history.good .sh_history
Zeroing it is the cleaner choice here. Of course if you have a recent backup, it'll solve your problem.

[Martin Johnson]

" > .sh_history" should clear things up.


HTH
Marty

[Martin Johnson]

" > .sh_history" should clear things up.

HTH
Marty

[John Poff]

Hi,

When I just want to look at my shell history file, I do this:

strings .sh_history | more

The 'strings' command helps because sometimes there are some binary characters in the history file. You can also pipe it to a file if you need to.

The real question is, why were you editing your history file? What did you do that you don't want them to find out about? ;)

JP

[Martin Johnson]

Sorry for the double posts - having problems with timeouts.

:-(
Marty