Show HN: Get help on any Linux command by typing 'howdoi –' in your terminal

Re:Show HN: Get help on any Linux command by typing 'howdoi ... by sfj on Tuesday May 19, 2020 @02:59AM (#23232065)

Instead of this, I keep a permanent log of every shell command I ever typed and have a handy alias to keep through it.

It also keeps track of the directory a command was run from, so I can limit my search. That way if I ever want to get back into a project I was working on long ago, I can just grep for commands run from that directory.

Not only that, but I can use it to cd to directories quickly. So if I was working under a huge p 10 level deep directory path, I have a alias that will match a string and cd into the last matching path in the permanent history file.

Not only that, but I can also search and then choose and rerun a command in the history, and also edit before rerunning it.

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Re:Show HN: Get help on any Linux command by typing 'howdoi ... by Jaxkr on Tuesday May 19, 2020 @03:00AM (#23232077)

How do I get this?

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Re:Show HN: Get help on any Linux command by typing 'howdoi ... by rhaps0dy on Tuesday May 19, 2020 @05:33AM (#23232987)

Just put:

export PROMPT_COMMAND='if [ "$(id -u)" -ne 0 ]; then echo "$(date "+%Y-%m-%d.%H:%M:%S") $(pwd) $(history 1)" >> "${HOME}/bash_logs_$(hostname)/bash-history-$(date "+%Y-%m-%d").log"; fi'

in your ~/.bash_profile. You also may need to `mkdir "${HOME}/bash_logs_$(hostname)"`

I took this command from a Hacker News thread of the past. I don't have a link to it any more.

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Re:Show HN: Get help on any Linux command by typing 'howdoi ... by vardump on Tuesday May 19, 2020 @07:09AM (#23233550)

There are several past posts with same bash one liner. For example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14108671

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Re:Show HN: Get help on any Linux command by typing 'howdoi ... by mic47 on Tuesday May 19, 2020 @03:39AM (#23232286)

I have similar setup (infinite history, remember directory, shell session, ...), and then ctrl-r runs fzf that find the command first in this session, then in the same directory, then in the rest. I already hinted about that setup here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22504950

Note, that just logging your directory, time and command in text file is great help, since if you don't remember something, you can just open the file and find what you need.

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Re:Show HN: Get help on any Linux command by typing 'howdoi ... by StavrosK on Tuesday May 19, 2020 @09:33AM (#23234678)

fish does this by default, and zoxide/z can switch to frecent directories.

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