'history -s' in script not working

Question

I am relatively new to Linux, and am frantically trying to rely on bash and ultimately zsh. In any case, at the moment this has puzzled me:

#!/bin/bash history -s "a_string" 

.... does not work. I've tried a dozen options for an idea, but it doesn't cut anything. Any ideas?

Answer 1

The subshell is not interactive and therefore does not save the story, or the parent shell does not reload the story.

Typical methods:

• use an alias instead of a script

    alias doit='history -s "a_string"' unalias doit 

• use shell function instead of script

    function doit() { echo "A function is a lot like a script" history -s "but operates in a subshell only when a bash command does (piping)" } unset doit 

• source script instead of executing it in a subshell

   source ./myscript.sh . ./myscript.sh # equivalent shorthand for source 

Answer 2

$HISTFILE and $HISTFILESIZE not set when running the script as follows. When you install $HISTFILE , you can read and write the story as you wish.