Why do some lines in the SHELL' history end with "*"
This is the first in a series of posts featuring Protips, tips, tricks, hacks, and secrets provided by Our Team 🙊 — We want to share our top tips for the growing and thriving Linux community out there. Because sometimes you need a little help...
In Linux, there’s a handy command to display all recently used commands: history. You can also view past commands by checking the .bash_history or .zsh_history file in your home directory.
By default, the history command displays the last 500 commands you've entered. Pretty useful, isn't it?
As your see below some lines contain an * asterisk at their end, but why?
$ history -E -100
...
..
10059* 11.11.2021 14:17 sudo rm -r whyu57KF.jpg cWynotfcf576.jpg
10060* 11.11.2021 14:17 ls
10061* 11.11.2021 14:17 sudo rm -r 334JOcWhgjd.jpg rgyhjb_o.jpg
10064* 11.11.2021 14:22 ls
10065* 11.11.2021 14:44 cd
10066* 11.11.2021 14:44 clear
10068 11.11.2021 14:45 sudo cscli decisions list | grep ban | wc -l
10070* 11.11.2021 14:45 sudo apt update
10071* 11.11.2021 14:46 sudo apt list --upgradable -a
10072* 11.11.2021 14:46 sudo apt -y upgrade
10073 11.11.2021 14:46 sudo rkhunter --propupd
10074* 11.11.2021 15:37 sudo apt update
10077* 11.11.2021 16:03 pwd
10079 11.11.2021 16:03 sudo apt update
10081* 11.11.2021 16:17 cd
10082* 11.11.2021 16:17 ls -a
10083* 11.11.2021 16:27 clear
...
..The * (asterisk) indicates commands run from a different session—simple as that. You can verify this by opening two terminal windows, running a series of commands in each, and then checking the history in both. The asterisk will only appear next to commands executed in the other window.
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