Question

I am aware that one can do

doskey /history 

to save the command history at a particular point in time, but I wonder if there’s a way to proactively save command history to a file, as the commands are being issued.

Once a command prompt is closed, the history is lost, so it’s easy to accidentally close a command prompt when one is done.

I’d like to be able to say something like:

log Commands.log

and then issue my commands, and have the commands be saved to Commands.log.

Answer 1

You could create a doskey macro to remap the EXIT command, as follows:

doskey exit=doskey/history$g$gc:\temp\commands.log$texit $1 $2

This would append the contents of your command history into a file named “c:\temp\commands.log” each time you exit the prompt by typing “exit”.

CAUTION: I haven’t tested potential side effects of using this with EXIT’s “/B exitCode” parameters, but there shouldn’t be any since you’re capturing the parameters with “$1 $2” anyway.

This doesn’t do exactly what you’re looking for, but it does capture your command history as long as you exit using EXIT (vs. just closing the window).

More info and samples on DOSKEY macros are here:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb490894.aspx