I have a question about the .bash_history file. First of all which one? Because there’s one called .bash_history in my home, and then a bounch of other .bash_history-xxxxx.tmp where every x is a digit. Are these previous history files or backups of the current .bash_history (that is to say, do they contain history information which is routinely purged from the current history file?
OK so now that we clarified the presence of multiple .bash_history files: how can I know the timestamp when commands were executed, if no timestamp appears in the file, which is made of many lines like these two:
emacs
lynx
emacs
I know there’s some way to activate timestamp retention for terminal commands, but given how my history appears on the current file I suspect that I wouldn’t be able ever to recover the timestamp of, say, the command lynx which I executed in the past — only, if I activate the timestamp function, then new commands will be stored on the history file with the corresponding timestamp. Am I right?
As a consequence of my reasoning above, I deduce that the history command will never provide any more information tahat is contained in the history file, regardless of the options I pass (one caveat: maybe I need to log off then back on to write the current session history on the history file). Is this right?