Originally posted by: olddawgnewtrix

I'm a user on AIX 5.3, and I'm trying to get the history command to show more than 15 entries. I'm using ksh. I'f I set HISTSIZE to 5 in my .profile, it limits history output to 5 entries. If I set it to 20, I still see only the 'default' 15 entries (what I see without any customization on my part). I'm not terribly upset at only seeing the last 15 commands, but I'd like to know what's going on.

TIA,
#AIX-Forum

Originally posted by: TimGilson

OK - you are doing the right thing by telling the shell how many commands you would like it to store using the HISTSIZE variable but when you want to view a specific number of previous commands, you use the following syntax:

history -7

will display your last seven commands. Alternatively using:

history 18

will show all your commands from the eighteenth to the most recently issued.

I hope this helps!
#AIX-Forum

Originally posted by: datta13

history -<number> displays you the no of history commands,

eg:- if you want to see last 100 history commands use
history -100

HISTSIZE is used to set not to repeate passwords, if HISTSIZE is 5 then you can use the old password for 5 times.
#AIX-Forum

Originally posted by: SystemAdmin

datta13: You mistook HISTSIZE variable with histsize user attribute. HISTSIZE variable determines the number of previous commands to remember, whereas histsize user attribute remembers the last x number of passwords.

r/
R
#AIX-Forum

Originally posted by: olddawgnewtrix

I think I got it figured out. With the $HISTSIZE env var I'm setting the number of the commands to store for recall, and the default returned from the history command is 15, but I can return more with a numeric argument, up to the amount stored.

thanks all
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