zsh history

Read and parse your complete zsh history.

require('zsh-history')().then(console.log);

[
  {
    time: Date('2016-08-20T20:09:24.000Z'),
    executionTime: 2,
    command: 'sleep',
    arguments: [ '2' ]
  },

  // many more commands
]

API

#history([histFile])

Parse a zsh history file, defaulting to ~/.zsh_history. Pass a path to a different history file if that's not where your history lives.

Returns a Promise resolving to an array of commands, or throwing an error if there was an issue parsing the file.

Input-Output Correspondence

zsh History Format

: 1471766804:3;git push origin master

• 1471766804: The time the command was executed in seconds from the Unix Epoch.
• 3: The execution time of the command in seconds.
• git push origin master: The full command executed and its arguments.

JavaScript Parsed Command

Each command (in the array of commands promised) has four parts:

{
  time: Date('2016-08-20T20:09:24.000Z'),
  executionTime: 2,
  command: 'sleep',
  arguments: [ '2' ]
}

• time: An instance of Date. The date and time the command was executed with second resolution.
• executionTime: The execution time of the command in seconds.
• command: The command executed. Just the first space-separated word from the full command.
• arguments: An array of arguments passed to the command, split with argv-split.

Example

Read the default zsh-history and log the result.

require('zsh-history')().then(console.log);

[
  {
    time: Date('2016-08-20T20:09:24.000Z'),
    executionTime: 2,
    command: 'sleep',
    arguments: [ '2' ]
  },

  // many more commands
]

Notes on Execution Time

You might see all 0s for execution time, even when commands (like sleep 1) don't execute instantaneously.

This likely means you are using the INC_APPEND_HISTORY and SHARE_HISTORY options, both of which are oh-my-zsh defaults.

These options write history to ~/.zsh_history before the command finishes executing so it can be immediately shared with other shell instances. A side effect is all zero execution times, since zsh has written down the command before it finishes.

Confusingly, history will report non-zero times for commands that took greater than zero seconds in your current shell. zsh maintains an internal history for the current shell, which history (aliased to fc -l 1) merges with ~/.zsh_history. The internal history contains accurate execution times regardless of settings.

To write execution time to history, the following zsh options must be set:

unsetopt SHARE_HISTORY
unsetopt APPEND_HISTORY
unsetopt INC_APPEND_HISTORY

setopt EXTENDED_HISTORY
setopt INC_APPEND_HISTORY_TIME

zsh has much more documentation on its history options.

Share History Without SHARE_HISTORY

To share history between shells with SHARE_HISTORY off, you may can to alias history="fc -R && fc -l 1", which will reload the history file when you run history.

Retrieving a session's own history (ex. up arrow) will always work as expected.