<Edited 7/2/2006 to add tags and Categories>
Ben Winzenz didn’t like the fact that Windows PowerShell did not maintain history lists between sessions (http://winzenz.blogspot.com/2006/06/cool-mshpowershell-tidbit.html) . We hear you Ben. Back to my least favorite phrase, “to ship is to choose”. That said, we try to give you in the community the power to do that which we cannot. Here is some code that you can put in your profile file that defines a function BYE which saves off your sessions history into a History.CSV file in your home directory and then adds that to your history when you startup the next session. You get to control how much of the history you want (up to 32KB-1) but I just do 1KBs worth.
$MaximumHistoryCount = 1KB
if (!(Test-Path ~\PowerShell -PathType Container))
{ New-Item ~\PowerShell -ItemType Directory
}
function bye
{ Get-History -Count 1KB |Export-CSV ~\PowerShell\history.csv
exit
}
if (Test-path ~\PowerShell\History.csv)
{ Import-CSV ~\PowerShell\History.csv |Add-History
}
I was going to put comments in the code but thought I would test out my assertion that VERBOSITY produces self-documenting scripts. I think it does but you can let me know one way or the other.
So add this to your startup and then do a session, type BYE instead of EXIT and then start a new session and do a Get-History. You’ll see a bunch of commands already in your list.
Now lets have a little fun with History, do what I instructed above and get into your new session. Now do a Get-History and pipe it to Get-Member:
PS> Get-History |Get-Member -MemberType Property
TypeName: Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.HistoryInfo
Name MemberType Definition
—- ———- ———-
CommandLine Property System.String CommandLine {get;}
EndExecutionTime Property System.DateTime EndExecutionTime {get;}
ExecutionStatus Property System.Management.Automation.Runspaces.Pip…
Id Property System.Int64 Id {get;}
StartExecutionTime Property System.DateTime StartExecutionTime {get;}
This means that you can find out when something was executed (e.g. which session it happened in) using the following command:
PS> ghy |ft id,endexecutiontime,commandline -auto
Id EndExecutionTime CommandLine
— —————- ———–
612 6/29/2006 5:39:34 AM gcm export-csv |fl *
613 6/30/2006 6:51:16 PM ipconfig
614 6/30/2006 8:51:38 PM cd C:\kits
…
Enjoy!
Jeffrey P. Snover
Windows PowerShell Architect
PSMDTAG:FAQ: How do I perserve command history across sessions?
PSMDTAG:FAQ: Can I run an exit script?
PSMDTAG:ENVIRONMENT: History
PSMDTAG:SHELL: shutdown, startup, exitScript
0 comments