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

[Sophoklis Goumas]

On Tue, 30 Jul 2024 at 12:35, Hans-Bernhard Bröker <hbbroeker@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Your conclusion about there being some extra prefix is premature.
>

Indeed it is, please excuse me.

> That's just the number of the history entry, padded up to 5 characters
> with spaces for better alignment (as in
>
>      printf("% 5d", ...)

That might've been better if it were "%05d" and I also wonder what will
happen if someone surpasses 99999 lines in his history file.

I think I'll have a look at binutils source.

This is because I'm trying to parse history output and I foolishly set
FS (field separator) to be two consecutive spaces '\ \ '.

I think I'll pass this to sed first and maybe replace with an unlikely
character to be found thereafter so these lines will be parseable or if
it's confirmed to be a hardcoded fixed width output I'll just use column
numbers.

I also hope this won't get mess the threads as I thought I was
subscribed to this mailing list so I am replying by hand and I don't
know if the right headers will be included, so please excuse as well,
if the threads get messed up.

Thanks for your time/energy/answer, Hans-Bernard,
Sophoklis