Solved csh history

talsamon

talsamon

Every time after I reboot the csh shell history is puzzled (Have this problem since I am back to FreeBSD with 8.X, find no reason and no solution). csh is login shell. Can I anything do to prevent this? This never happened with bash. It does not happen if I manually close the window-manager (fvwm-crystal) and log out on the terminal. But there must a way to reboot directly from fvwm-crystal, without crash the history, bash can do this.
 
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You need to set the history options for the shell. For example, in my user's .tcshrc file I have the following:
Code: 
# set shell history
set history = 2048

set histfile = ~/.tcsh_history
 
I thought I have something formatted wrong. I deleted the post as I saw it is a standard footer. Thanks.
 
Oops, I forgot to add the merge line in my output above. Sorry about that. Try this:
Code: 
# set shell history
set history = 2048
set savehist = (2048 merge)
set histfile = ~/.tcsh_history # This line is optional
 
Looks per default so:
Code: 
...
if ($?prompt) then
  # An interactive shell -- set some stuff up
  set prompt = "%N@%m:%~ %# "
  set promptchars = "%#"

  set filec
  set history = 1000
  set savehist = (1000 merge)
  set autolist = ambiguous
  # Use history to aid expansion
  set autoexpand
  set autorehash
  set mail = (/var/mail/$USER)
  if ( $?tcsh ) then
  bindkey "^W" backward-delete-word
  bindkey -k up history-search-backward
  bindkey -k down history-search-forward
  endif

endif
...
 
Ok, I'm getting a bit confused here...

Both csh(1) and tcsh(1) are tcsh. They are the same shell. The only difference is when csh is used to invoke the shell, some options are turned off by default. In short, use tcsh and not csh to start the shell unless you have some reason to do otherwise.

It might help to see your entire .cshrc file.
 
Here is a Perl script that I use to clean ~/.history.
Code: 
#!/usr/bin/env perl 
#===============================================================================
#
#         FILE: history_cleaner.pl
#
#        USAGE: ./history_cleaner.pl  
#
#  DESCRIPTION: Cleans th ~/.history file from some entries
#
# REQUIREMENTS: ~/.history
#        NOTES: clean the history file and load the new history from file
#               cannot be done within this script. It has to be done manually,
#               after running the script.
#       AUTHOR: Getopt 
#      VERSION: 1.1
#  LAST CHANGE: 30.08.2015
#
#===============================================================================

use v5.18;
use File::Copy;

my $historyfile = "$ENV{HOME}/.history";
my $historydebugfile = "$ENV{HOME}/history_debug";

my $debug = 0;
if ( $debug ) {
    if ( !-e $historydebugfile ) {      # Test if file does not exist
        copy($historyfile, $historydebugfile) or die "Copy failed: $!";
        say "DEBUG: $historyfile has been copied to $historydebugfile";
    }
    else { 
        say "DEBUG: Working on $historydebugfile";
    }
    $historyfile = $historydebugfile;
}

sub usage {
  say "Usage:  history_cleaner delete expr   deletes matching expression";  
  say "        history_cleaner auto          cleans not useful entries";
  say "        history_cleaner repair        cleans corrupted lines";
}

if ( @ARGV == () || @ARGV[0] !~ m/auto|rep|repair|del|delete/ ) {
  usage();
  exit;
}

# read the file in an array
open FILE, "<", $historyfile or die "Error opening $historyfile: $!\n";
    my @line = <FILE>;
close (FILE);
chomp(@line);

my $minlen = 6;     # Minimum length of command line
my @newline;

foreach my $i ( 0 .. $#line ) {
    if ( $line[$i] =~ s/^#\+//) {
        # $_ is now epoch (we might use it someday)  
        # $line[$i+1] has the command line

        # Delete corrupted lines
        if ( $ARGV[0] =~ m/rep|repair/ && $line[$i+1] =~ m/#\+/) {
            say "deleted: $line[$i+1]";
            next;
        }
        # Delete small lines
        elsif ( $ARGV[0] =~ m/auto/ && length($line[$i+1]) <= $minlen) {
            say "deleted: $line[$i+1]";
            next;
        }
        # Delete unneccesary or unwanted commands
        elsif ( $ARGV[0] =~ m/auto/ &&
                $line[$i+1] =~ m/^(pkg i|pkg d|dmesg|drill|which|chown|chmod|touch|tail|head|host|kill|diff|opie|echo|eval|find|wipe|set|setenv|cat|cal|man|cd|cp|dc|ls|ll|mv|rm|[0-9]|\~|\+|\.|\/|\$)/ ) {
            say "deleted: $line[$i+1]";
            next;
        }
        # Delete matched command lines
        elsif ( $ARGV[0] =~ m/del|delete/ && $line[$i+1] =~ m/$ARGV[1]/ ) {
            say "deleted: $line[$i+1]";
            next;
        }
        else {
            push @newline, "#+$line[$i]";
            push @newline, $line[$i+1];
        }
    }
}

system("mv $historyfile $historyfile~");
open FILE, ">", $historyfile or die "Error opening $historyfile: $!\n";
map {
    say FILE $_;
} @newline;
close (FILE);

say "To make the changes permanent, you need to run manually:";
say  "> history -c && history -L $historyfile\n";
 
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