Re: history -f filename

[Lawrence Velázquez]

On Sat, Nov 30, 2024, at 9:36 PM, Dan Jacobson wrote:
> We see for simple
> $ history
> output, there's no way to change the file it reads, at least with the
> current (same PID) shell.

Why is "same PID" a requirement?  Why isn't something like this
sufficient?

        history_f() (
                history -c &&
                history -r -- "$1" &&
                history
        )
        history_f .bash_history_foobar

> CR> What exactly would this do?
>
> It would do just like plain
> $ history
> but instead of reading from the in memory list,
> (which is about the same as $HISTFILE + or - one line)
> it would read from the given file.

And what would be the point of this?  You'd get a list of commands
prefixed with information that's useless (other than timestamps,
perhaps) because you haven't actually modified the history list.

-- 
vq