Rails console history command (via pry) -- can it be grepped or tailed?

Question

In Rails 4 rails console I can type history and it will behave just like the history command from the bash shell. E.g.:

[25] my_rails_project »  history
  1: Nomination
  2: {:ad => "asdfsdasadf"}
  3: Nomination.count
  4: Nomination.count.to_sql
  5: Nomination.all.class
  6: Nomination.all.to_sql
  ...

Is there a way to search that history, e.g. history | grep Nomination? How about tail?

Note: When I initially wrote this question I thought the history command came from Rails itself, but it comes from the pry gem which I have in my system (my Gemfile specifies the jazz_hands gem which pulls in pry). Pry does in fact have a grep feature, e.g. history --grep Nomination will give me lines 1 and 3-6 above. It also has a tail feature. These are documented here: https://github.com/pry/pry/wiki/History

Actually, pry's history command is `hist` -- I'm not sure how `history` actually is a legitimate command. — Purplejacket, Dec 19 '13 at 23:44

score 8 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 19 '13 at 22:17

Go to rails console
press <ctrl> + r and type few letters of the command.
use <ctrl> + r to choose other commands that match the search
use <ctrl> + <shift> + r to choose the command in the reverse direction

Exactly like the <ctrl> + r in bash shell

Stoic · Accepted Answer · 2013-12-20T00:39:25.503

7

You can use ~/.irb-history for this purpose. So, the following can be used (you must be knowing how to do this, but this is only for reference):

tail -fn0 ~/.irb-history  # for tailing
cat ~/.irb-history | grep something # for searching

Note that, you might have both the files: ~/.irb-history and ~/.irb_history, and any one of them can be more up to date than the other. I have not been able to resolve this mystery yet. So, use the one you find more suitable for yourself.

UPDATE: You can access history in a variable using the following logic (it took me a while to read the code Pry uses, try edit history inside pry):

 def pry_history
   arr = []
   history = Pry::History.new
   history.send(:read_from_file) do |line|
     arr.push line.chomp
   end
   arr
 end

Now, you can simply call pry_history to get an array of pry's history. You can further save it inside your .pryrc configuration file and use it whenever you want in pry.

edited Dec 20 '13 at 00:39

answered Dec 19 '13 at 22:16

Stoic

10,536
6
41
60

Would you know how to do this in a more "Rubyish" way? E.g., direct manipulation of this `history` command from within the rails console? I don't see an object getting returned that I can manipulate, seems like that would be nice. – Purplejacket Dec 19 '13 at 23:06
do you want to manipulate history in a script or within irb console? – Stoic Dec 19 '13 at 23:14
... within irb console – Purplejacket Dec 19 '13 at 23:42
I would still like some ways of manipulating whatever it is that pry's history command gives me. – Purplejacket Dec 19 '13 at 23:44

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 27 '15 at 17:46

2

Probably this is what you are looking for:

def search_history(filter)
    puts `cat ~/.irb-history | grep "#{filter}"`
end

answered Sep 27 '15 at 17:46

Arnold Roa

7,335
5
50
69

Andrew · Answer 4 · 2022-05-24T07:47:37.367

It's worth noting that if you are using pry then the history file will be located at ~/.pry_history. You may also come across this history file .byebug_history.

I've added the following commands to my ~/.pryrc config file.

Pry.config.commands.alias_command 'find.history', 'hist -G'

Pry::Commands.command 'search.history', 'filter commands in the history using fzf and output the selected command' do
  puts `cat ~/.pry_history | sort | uniq | fzf --tac --tiebreak=index --height=20`
end

Pry::Commands.command 'search.history.run', 'filter commands in the history using fzf and execute the selected command' do
  _pry_.input = StringIO.new(`cat ~/.pry_history | sort | uniq | fzf --tac --tiebreak=index --height=20 | perl -pe 'chomp if eof'`)
end

Rails console history command (via pry) -- can it be grepped or tailed?

4 Answers4