Using screen command in linux does not allow command history to be logged

I've been using screen for quite some time now and I agree, it improves my productivity.But one thing that I really miss is the command history. Anything I type in a screen session doesn't get logged in command history. When I googled for the same I found something related to this issue: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/aliases-lost-when-using-screen-723624/

But surprisingly in my case all the aliases are intact and I'm able to use them without any issues. As far as I know opening a new screen session actually opens a new sub-shell. If this is true, could someone help me how to get the commands typed in screen session to be logged in the command history so that if I open a new terminal/screen later on I'll be able to access the commands from command history using CTRL+R . Any solution that helps me make screen log commands in command history would be very much helpful. Appreciate your time.开发者_JAVA百科 Thank you.

Assuming a bash shell is being used within the screen.

Insert the 2 statements into ~/.bashrc:

shopt -s histappend
PROMPT_COMMAND="$PROMPT_COMMAND;history -a"

The first command appends the commands to the history file, rather than overwrite it while the second command saves each command right after it has been executed, not at the end of the session.

To expand on my answer.. the history for each bash session that you have open is stored in memory until you logout/close the session. Then it will overwrite the bash history file. These commands will append to the history file, and then flush to the file after every command.

It's easy to use shared history between sessions in Zsh, and this blog post by Derek Reeve explains how to do it. In short, add this to your ~/.zshrc:

setopt share_history
HISTSIZE=1000
SAVEHIST=1000
HISTFILE=~/.history
setopt APPEND_HISTORY

I also found instructions for doing the same thing on Bash, but I've only tried this on Zsh.