Linux commands: history

A quick guide to the `history` command, used to view the command line history

Every time we run a command, that’s memorized in the history.

You can display all the history using:

history

This shows the history with numbers:

You can use the syntax !<command number> to repeat a command stored in the history, in the above example typing !121 will repeat the ls -al | wc -l command.

Typically the last 500 commands are stored in the history.

You can combine this with grep to find a command you ran:

history | grep docker

To clear the history, run history -c

The history command works on Linux, macOS, WSL, and anywhere you have a UNIX environment