Search through previous powershell commands with grep

 

It can be really difficult trying to remember that command you used a few weeks ago in Powershell.  Here’s an easy way to search through your previous commands to find the right one and jog your memory. First, run

(Get-PSReadlineOption).HistorySavePath C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\PowerShell\PSReadline\ConsoleHost_history.txt

Then you can cat the output to look for the command

cat C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\PowerShell\PSReadline\ConsoleHost_history.txt

Or just open it in notepad

notepad C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\PowerShell\PSReadline\ConsoleHost_history.txt

If you want to search for a specific command within your history you can use findstr as follows

cat C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\PowerShell\PSReadline\ConsoleHost_history.txt | findstr -i get-azureadgr

Or if you’re more comfortable with the UNIX/Linux commands like myself you can use grep in Powershell by creating an alias as follows

new-alias grep findstr

And search for the command as before, but this time using grep 😊

cat C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\PowerShell\PSReadline\ConsoleHost_history.txt | grep -i get-azureadgr