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command-linepowershellhistory

PowerShell history: how do you prevent duplicate commands?

Background:

PowerShell history is a lot more useful to me now that I have a way to save history across sessions.

# Run this every time right before you exit PowerShell
get-history -Count $MaximumHistoryCount | export-clixml $IniFileCmdHistory;

Now, I am trying to prevent PowerShell from saving duplicate commands to my history.

I tried using Get-Unique, but that doesn't work since every command in the history is "unique", because each one has a different ID number.

Solution

  • Get-Unique also requires a sorted list and I assume you probably want to preserve execution order. Try this instead

    Get-History -Count 32767 | Group CommandLine | Foreach {$_.Group[0]} |
Export-Clixml "$home\pshist.xml"

    This approach uses the Group-Object cmdlet to create unique buckets of commands and then the Foreach-Object block just grabs the first item in each bucket.

    BTW if you want all commands saved to a history file I would use the limit value - 32767 - unless that is what you set $MaximumHistoryCount to.

    BTW if you want to automatically save this on exit you can do this on 2.0 like so

    Register-EngineEvent PowerShell.Exiting {
  Get-History -Count 32767 | Group CommandLine |
  Foreach {$_.Group[0]} | Export-CliXml "$home\pshist.xml" } -SupportEvent

    Then to restore upon load all you need is

    Import-CliXml "$home\pshist.xml" | Add-History