I use a simple alias to enable the tracking of commands in one or many terminal window(s):alias trackmi='export PROMPT_COMMAND=history -a; $PROMPT_COMMAND'Then I just tail -f my .bash_history file in another terminal on the workspace to get immediate feedback. I have just enabled unlimited history  and updated my history format (export HISTTIMEFORMAT=[%F %T] ) in .bashrc. Of course the history command displays the timestamps. But the format the history file per se is:#1401234303alias#1401234486cat ../.bashrc How can I have the Unix time converted and the whole command displayed on a single line just like with the history command, including numbering:578  [2014-05-27 19:45:03] alias579  [2014-05-27 19:48:06] cat ../.bashrc ...and follow that. Or find a way to continuously output the output of the history command to the terminal?
How to have command history with timestamps output to the terminal continuously?
bash;text processing;command history;date
With GNU awk:tail -fn+1 ~/.bash_history | awk '  /^#/{printf %-4d [%s] , ++n, strftime(%F %T, substr($0, 2)); next}; 1'