On Mon, Dec 16, 2024 at 21:46:21 -0500, Chet Ramey wrote: > On 12/16/24 9:36 PM, Dale R. Worley wrote: > > Chet Ramey <chet.ra...@case.edu> writes: > > > Yes: > > > > > > -s Store the args in the history list as a single entry. > > > The last command in the history list is removed before > > > adding the args. > > > > > > That last command is usually `history -s args'. > > > > What is the point of "history -s args", then? What is it useful for? > > To add arbitrary data to the history list, for whatever reason a user > likes. I think the documentation is fairly clear on that.
I think Dale's misunderstanding what Chet's saying. What Chet's saying, as I understand it, is: * Sometimes you want to add "my command" to your history list without actually running it. * To do that, you run "history -s my command" from your interactive shell. * A naive implementation would add "my command" and "history -s my command" both to your history list. * That's probably not what you want, so instead of adding both commands, bash only adds the "my command" part, and drops the command that you actually typed. * The OP of this thread ran into a weird corner case, because they didn't actually type "history -s my command" at a shell prompt. Instead, they wrote a function, "foo", and had the function issue the history command. * When the OP types "foo", bash's implementation adds "my command" to the history list, and discards the command that was actually typed, which was "foo".
