get bash history to vi

Question

When I try to read bash history into vim, I get nothing.

:r !history

If I just execute the command, i.e.

:!history

Answer 1

:r!echo "history" | bash -i 2>/dev/null | sed -e 's/\x1b\[.//g'

---

Explanation:

The history command only works on interactive shell.

The first part:

echo "history" | bash -i 2>/dev/null

Forces interactive shell (and removes lines which aren't output of history).

The second part:

sed -e 's/\x1b\[.//g'

Removes escape character the shell might output (happened on my system).