Copy PowerShell History Command

I thought I'd share a short but useful PowerShell utility. This is something that is very handy when I am writing. As you know, PowerShell maintains a command history in your PowerShell session. You can view history with the Get-History cmdlet or its alias h. To re-rerun a command use Invoke-History or its alias r, specifying the history ID. You can also use PSReadline and Ctrl+R to search history. An advantage with this approach is that you are technically searching your saved history which can include commands from previous sessions. I use this all the time but sometimes, I have slightly different needs. That's where today's function comes into play.

There are many times when I want the command line from a history item. Run this to see what I'm talking about.

Get-History | Select ID,Commandline

I either need to copy the command line so I can paste it into a document or I want to bring it back to my prompt to either re-run or edit and then run. Running Invoke-History is simple enough for re-running the command, but I can't tweak it. Or I can use PSReadline and search for the command. Once I find it, I can adjust it and then run it. But I need something in-between. The answer is a utility to copy the command line from the specified history item to the clipboard. Lee Holmes has a similar utility described in the PowerShell Cookbook. This is my version.

Function Copy-HistoryCommand {

    [CmdletBinding(SupportsShouldProcess)]
    [alias("ch")]
    [outputtype("None", "System.String")]
    Param(
        [Parameter(Position = 0)]
        [ValidateNotNullOrEmpty()]
        [int]$ID = $(Get-History).Count,
        [switch]$Passthru)

    Begin {
        Write-Verbose "[BEGIN  ] Starting: $($MyInvocation.Mycommand)"
    } #begin

    Process {
        Write-Verbose "[PROCESS] Getting commandline from history item: $id"
        $cmdstring = (Get-History -Id $id).CommandLine
        If ($PSCmdlet.ShouldProcess("ID #$id [$cmdstring]")) {
            $cmdstring | Microsoft.PowerShell.Management\Set-Clipboard

            If ($Passthru) {
                #write the command to the pipeline
                $cmdstring
            } #If passthru
        }
    } #process

    End {
        Write-Verbose "[END    ] Ending: $($MyInvocation.Mycommand)"
    } #end

} #close function

The command is pretty simple. It takes the commandline property and copies it to the clipboard using Set-Clipboard. The function merely makes this easier by defining an alias and adding a few features like -Passthru and -WhatIf.

In this example, I'm copying the command from history item #3 to the clipboard. I used -Passthru so you can see for yourself. In my Windows Terminal session, I can use Ctrl+V or the right mouse button to paste the command at my prompt. That's what I love about this. It only takes a few simple keystrokes to bring back a command I want to edit and re-run. I haven't found a way to copy the command and automatically paste it into the next prompt. But the current process is simple and quick enough.

This command will eventually be part of the PSScriptTools module. But for now, feel free to use this code if this is something you would find useful.

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