{"id":4995,"date":"2012-09-10T00:01:00","date_gmt":"2012-09-10T00:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.technet.microsoft.com\/heyscriptingguy\/2012\/09\/10\/increase-powershell-command-history-to-the-max-almost\/"},"modified":"2012-09-10T00:01:00","modified_gmt":"2012-09-10T00:01:00","slug":"increase-powershell-command-history-to-the-max-almost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/increase-powershell-command-history-to-the-max-almost\/","title":{"rendered":"Increase PowerShell Command History to the Max (Almost)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Summary<\/b>: In Windows PowerShell command history, you may run into the console history limit.<\/p>\n

Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, is here. While I was in Cincinnati, Ohio for their first Windows PowerShell User Group meeting, I had a chance to meet a lot of my old friends. Later that week when I was teaching a Windows PowerShell workshop for a customer, I had a chance to meet other old friends. You might say that I was geeking out on seeing so many of my old friends—in fact, I was a bit worried that I would overflow my personal history buffer. Luckily, in Windows PowerShell 3.0, overflowing the history buffer is a bit difficult to do.<\/p>\n

Playing around with Windows PowerShell 3.0 history settings<\/h2>\n

In Windows PowerShell 3.0 the MaximumHistoryCount <\/b>is set to 4096. I find this value by using the Get-Variable <\/b>cmdlet. This command is shown here.<\/p>\n

PS C:\\> Get-Variable -Name MaximumHistoryCount<\/p>\n

Name                           Value<\/p>\n

—-                           —–<\/p>\n

MaximumHistoryCount            4096<\/p>\n

At 4096, it is unlikely that I will ever need to increase the storage space. In Windows PowerShell 1.0, it was set to 64, and I frequently was overwriting my command history. I generally do not keep the same Windows PowerShell console session open long enough to type 4096 commands—so I have never overwritten that history buffer. But what if I feel the need to increase my command history? What is the biggest value I can assign? One way to find out is to simply run a command and see what happens. Using one of my top ten favorite Windows PowerShell tricks, I use the range operator and begin assigning new values. Here is the command I use.<\/p>\n

1..50000 | % {Set-Variable -Name MaximumHistoryCount -Value $_ }<\/p>\n

What I am looking for is an error to raise that states I have exceeded the allowed value for the variable. This is exactly what happens, and I press CTRL-C to break the command and prevent further errors from appearing in the Windows PowerShell console. The command and the error that appears when the command runs are shown here.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/a><\/p>\n

A better approach to finding maximum values that are permitted for a variable involves using the Get-Variable<\/b> cmdlet. In the following command, I return information about the MaximumHistoryCount<\/b> variable by piping the output to the Format-List<\/b> cmdlet.<\/p>\n

PS C:\\> Get-Variable MaximumHistoryCount | fl *<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Name        : MaximumHistoryCount<\/p>\n

Description : The maximum number of history objects to retain in a session.<\/p>\n

Value       : 4096<\/p>\n

Visibility  : Public<\/p>\n

Module      :<\/p>\n

ModuleName  :<\/p>\n

Options     : None<\/p>\n

Attributes  : {System.Management.Automation.ValidateRangeAttribute}<\/p>\n

I see that the Attributes<\/b> property contains an object. To investigate the Attributes<\/b> property, I pipe the results of Get-Variable<\/b> to the Select-Object<\/b> cmdlet, and I use the ExpandProperty<\/b> parameter. This technique is shown here.<\/p>\n

PS C:\\> Get-Variable MaximumHistoryCount | Select-Object -ExpandProperty attributes<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

                    MinRange                    MaxRange TypeId<\/p>\n

                    ——–                    ——– ——<\/p>\n

1                                           32767 System.Management.Automa…<\/p>\n

The MaxRange<\/b> property tells me that the maximum allowed value for MaximumHistoryCount<\/b> automatic variable is 32767. Interestingly enough, the error shown in the previous image occurs when I attempt to set the value to 32768, and I could assume that 32767 was the most that I could store. Now I know for certain.<\/p>\n

Join me tomorrow when I will talk about more cool Windows PowerShell stuff.<\/p>\n

I invite you to follow me on Twitter<\/a> and Facebook<\/a>. If you have any questions, send email to me at scripter@microsoft.com<\/a>, or post your questions on the Official Scripting Guys Forum<\/a>. See you tomorrow. Until then, peace.<\/p>\n

Ed Wilson, Microsoft Scripting Guy<\/b> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Summary: In Windows PowerShell command history, you may run into the console history limit. Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, is here. While I was in Cincinnati, Ohio for their first Windows PowerShell User Group meeting, I had a chance to meet a lot of my old friends. Later that week when I was teaching a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":596,"featured_media":87096,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[364,3,45],"class_list":["post-4995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-scripting","tag-powershell-3-0","tag-scripting-guy","tag-windows-powershell"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

Summary: In Windows PowerShell command history, you may run into the console history limit. Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, is here. While I was in Cincinnati, Ohio for their first Windows PowerShell User Group meeting, I had a chance to meet a lot of my old friends. Later that week when I was teaching a […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/596"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/scripting\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}