.bin/check_installed.sh:fc:3: no such event: 1 when trying to run a set of commands from script that work fine when ran in the terminal directly

3 years ago by promitheas to c/shell

Hello everyone. I wrote this command in the terminal directly and got the desired and expected output - that being the last 50 occurrences of me installing or removing a package with pacman or yay: history | grep -e 'pacman -S\s' -e 'pacman -R\s' -e 'yay -S\s' -e 'yay -R\s' | tail -n 50 > ~/history_installed

I now want to make this runnable as a script for obvious reasons, but when add it to a script and run it I get the following error: /home/user/.bin/check_installed.sh:fc:3: no such event: 1

Here is my entire script:

#!/bin/zsh

{history | grep -e 'pacman -S\s' -e 'pacman -R\s' -e 'yay -S\s' -e 'yay -R\s' | tail -n 50} > ~/history_installed

Note: /home/user/.bin is in my path. Verified by successfully running another script in there from a different location.

Please help me figure this out if you could. I am running zsh with oh-my-zsh. Thanks in advance!

pnutzh4x0r 1 point 3 years ago

I think the issue is that history is a shell built-in and not an actual program (ie. external command) and it typically only works in an interactive shell session.

A workaround could be to access the $HISTFILE directly:

{cat $HISTFILE | grep ...

Of course, you can use also just do:

{grep -e ... $HISTFILE | ...}

if you are opposed to the cat at the beginning.

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promitheas 1 point 3 years ago

I tried using cat but I got the same result. I must admit I wasn't aware that history is a shell built in and not a program. Given that is the case, would it not be very difficult to get the contents of history int o a temporary file from a shell script as I am attempting to do? Here is the new line which I attempted:

{cat $HISTFILE | grep -e 'pacman -S\s' -e 'pacman -R\s' -e 'yay -S\s' -e 'yay -R\s' | tail -n 50} > ~/history_installed

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pnutzh4x0r 2 points 3 years ago

An alternative to making a shell script is to make an alias or a function instead. That way, it runs in your current shell session and you can access the history command.

Additionally, you could always dump the output of the history command outside the shell script and then run the shell script on that file after you have dumped it.

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promitheas 2 points 3 years ago

I managed to get it working with an alias, not sure how it didn't come to me before! I am however still curious if it is possible to achieve the same result through a script, and if so how that would be done, so if its alright I'll leave this unmarked as solved for a short while longer in the hope a solution is given by someone. Thank you!

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narshee 1 point 3 years ago

I don't know zsh, but the curly brackets like that are not correct in posix sh. { commands; } is correct. { history | grep -e 'pacman -S\s' -e 'pacman -R\s' -e 'yay -S\s' -e 'yay -R\s' | tail -n 50; } > ~/history_installed I think that fixes it. Also check out shellcheck if you don't have already.

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From Ash, Bash and Csh to Xonsh, Ysh and Zsh; all shell languages are welcome here!

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From Ash, Bash and Csh to Xonsh, Ysh and Zsh; all shell languages are welcome here!

Rules: