I am a novice using PowerShell 5.1 under Win 10. I am tinkering with history. So far, I managed to have a persistent history across sessions with PSReadline
. *
But this is a "limited" persistent history, as only commands are saved in a text file, which is read when launching a new session. So a lot of information on the HistoryInfo objects is lost, in particular the StartExecutionTime . Then,
Get-Content (Get-PSReadlineOption).HistorySavePath
gives all commands with no "timestamp", and Get-History
gives commands with timestamp but only for the current session. I am used to history
in bash
, which gets both points right.
This old doc (2009) shows a possible workaround. I managed to export all history info before leaving a session with Get-History | Export-Clixml $env:PSDIR'\my_history.xml'
Get-History | Export-Clixml $env:PSDIR'\my_history.xml'
. Executing Import-Clixml $env:PSDIR'\my_history.xml' | Add-History
Import-Clixml $env:PSDIR'\my_history.xml' | Add-History
at the beginning of a new session recovers the full history, including timestamps.
What is missing, I guess, is:
A way to automatically export history upon closing the session. I don't even know if this is possible.
Removing the first line in the history after importing, as it contains the importing command itself. I didn't work on this, but I guess I can handle it. Not needed. If the importing command is executed in startup scripts it does not go to history.
Is this a viable way to achieve the intended result? If so, how could I incarnate item 1?
Are there any alternatives?
* Although I could not make it work in the PS ISE .
Thanks to the pointer by RetiredGeek , I could move forward. What I did:
Added Register-EngineEvent PowerShell.Exiting -Action {. $env:PSDIR'\history\save_history.ps1' }
Register-EngineEvent PowerShell.Exiting -Action {. $env:PSDIR'\history\save_history.ps1' }
to my profile.ps1
.
Created file $env:PSDIR'\history\save_history.ps1'
containing Get-History | Export-Clixml $env:PSDIR'\my_history.xml'
Get-History | Export-Clixml $env:PSDIR'\my_history.xml'
This almost provides a solution. The only two remaining issues are:
Removing the exit
command that is left as the last command in history. This seems manageable.
Make this work when closing by hitting "X". * In this case, I have observed a strange result. If I close session #1 with "X", and open a new session #2, the commands that I have entered in session #1 do not show up at the bottom of Get-History
. Nevertheless, they are available with Up/Dpwn arrows. This is likely worth another question.
* As per this , starting with PS v3 the "X" button was hooked up with the exit event. But "X" does not seem to work exactly like exit
, given point 2 above.
I know this is an old post but thought i'd share.
in the past i took a long time moving off windows 8.1 and was managing my history without psreadline and just powershells add- clear- get- history commands. I wanted to save the history to a file and when loading a new session, have it read in the file.
I'd done the same using the Register-EngineEvent, but got frustrated losing the history if the terminal crashed or I 'x'ed out by mistake.
While I dont use the trick anymore, I did for a while. The trick was to have a snippet in my prompt function to append the last item in get-history to a csv file. Sure its ugly and a write to disk for each command you issue, but it worked for me and in case it tickles your fancy it worked like this:
so for example in your profile
# in your profile somewhere
$Env:MyPoshHistory = "$($env:USERPROFILE)\MyPoshHistory.csv"
If ( Test-Path $Env:MyPoshHistory ) {
Add-History -InputObject $( Import-Csv $Env:MyPoshHistory )
}
and then in your prompt add
If ($Env:MyPoshHistory) {
Get-History | Select-Object -Last 1 | Export-Csv $Env:MyPoshHistory -Append
}
If your not sure how to add to your prompt, (which is just a function in powershell), see https://ss64.com/ps/syntax-prompt.html
easiest way is to define a function called prompt in your profile
function prompt {
If ($Env:MyPoshHistory) {
Get-History | Select-Object -Last 1 | Export-Csv $Env:MyPoshHistory -Append
}
'PS ' + $pwd + '> '
}
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