Maybe not encrypted, but bytes at the very least.
I’m familiar with the PSReadline history file and have explored mine before. Sometime last year I updated my PSReadlinemodule to 2.2.6 on my primary work Windows machine.
My PSReadline history has been working fine and my prediction source has been set to “History” for a long time.
I looked at my Console_history.txt file today in Notepad and found that it was filled with bytes rather than plain text. e.g.
It was actually much bigger, but I have since tried deleting it and establishing new history.
I use two different accounts on this machine and from what I can see they have identical PSreadlineoptions set, but only this one account has a history file like this. The same account on other computers, with the default PSReadline 2.0.0, has a plaintext history file.
I cannot seem to find any explanation for this behavior on the forum, the internet, or even going through PSReadline’s github issues.
Does anyone have an explanation for this behavior?
EDIT: as an experiment I read the console_history.txt file in as bytes, skipped the first two and converted it to Base64, then converted that Base64 string to plain text and voila, my history. But I still can’t find anything in PSReadline’s documentation that describes storing the command history in raw bytes.
EDIT: as a test I renamed the 2.2.6 folder for PSReadline to “bak_2.2.6” to force Powershell to use the default 2.0.0 version. Re-opened Powershell, typed some commands and checked the Console_history.txt file and they’re still getting written in the same format.
I’m primarily using Windows Terminal, though I also use VS Code.
In Windows Terminal I’m using “Hack Nerd Font”, but I am using the same setup for both of my accounts, and only one account’s Console_history.txt is exhibiting this behavior.
The functionality of PSReadline’s history still works. Meaning with my prediction source set to “History” I still get predictive text, so somehow PSReadline is reading this console history file without a problem
mine comes back as “Western European (Windows)”
If i open Pwsh 7.4.6 in Windows Terminal it is UTF-8, but it’s also reading/writing to console_history as bytes instead of plaintext, and that’s using the newer PSReadline v2.3.5
Ok, update on my end.
I finally just completely deleted my Console_history.txt file and relaunched Powershell and now my history file is in plain text.
I’m gonna go crazy wondering what caused this.
EDIT: I want to say it was @tonyd remark about the encoding on the file. If it was marked as UTF-16 encoding, maybe PSreadline was still reading/writing to it no problem, but when I try to view it I was seeing the bytes like the above picture. I kept a copy of the previous history file, and if I manually read it in as bytes, and immediately pass those to UTF8.GetString() it comes out as plain text. I think somewhere along the lines the file encoding got messed up.
good call.
Copying you on my GOOD file it absolutely looks like the same Kanji garbage when i read it as Unicode. It doesn’t unfortunately work on the bad file, but I think you’re on to the catalyst for this.
