Why cygwin's history output is prefixed by two spaces?

[Hans-Bernhard Bröker]

Am 30.07.2024 um 12:35 schrieb Sophoklis Goumas via Cygwin:
> 0000000  sp  sp  sp   4   3  sp  sp   h   i   s   t   o   r   y  sp   |

> [...]
> 0000000  sp   7   3   5   1  sp  sp   h   i   s   t   o   r   y  sp   |

> Hypotheses/ideas/insights/explanations/conclusions?

Your conclusion about there being some extra prefix is premature.

That's just the number of the history entry, padded up to 5 characters 
with spaces for better alignment (as in

     printf("% 5d", ...)

Your cygwin was much fewer entries in the history of that particular 
shell instance, thus the number had only two digits. Your comparison 
target has accumulated much more history, thus the number has 4 digits.