The value is in when you remember you did something before, but not exactly how. So you just grep or scan through your history, and the files you edited &#x2F; commands you ran are likely to refresh your memory even if they don&#x27;t exactly capture the entire workflow.<p>Also means you don&#x27;t have to retype complicated commands too often.<p>Practical example: I remember I cleaned up some calibre converted epubs with perl a couple months ago, because they had a piece of text injected by some kind of generator on every page. It took me some time to figure out the exact replacement patterns, and if I were to do it again, I just need to do:<p>$ history 0 | grep perl
...
    823  perl -0777 -i.original -pe &#x27;s#&lt;b class=&quot;calibre1&quot;&gt;Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv&lt;a href=&quot;<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.processtext.com&#x2F;abclit.html&quot;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.processtext.com&#x2F;abclit.html&quot;</a> class=&quot;calibre2&quot;&gt;erter, <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.processtext.com&#x2F;abclit.html&lt;&#x2F;a&gt;&lt;&#x2F;b&gt;&lt;&#x2F;p&gt;\n&lt;p" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.processtext.com&#x2F;abclit.html&lt;&#x2F;a&gt;&lt;&#x2F;b&gt;&lt;&#x2F;p&gt;\n&lt;p</a> class=&quot;calibre3&quot;&gt;##g&#x27; part1.xhtml
    825  perl -0777 -i.original -pe &#x27;s#&lt;b class=&quot;calibre1&quot;&gt;Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv&lt;a href=&quot;<a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.processtext.com&#x2F;abclit.html&quot;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.processtext.com&#x2F;abclit.html&quot;</a> class=&quot;calibre2&quot;&gt;erter, <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.processtext.com&#x2F;abclit.html&lt;&#x2F;a&gt;&lt;&#x2F;b&gt;&lt;&#x2F;p&gt;\n&lt;p" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.processtext.com&#x2F;abclit.html&lt;&#x2F;a&gt;&lt;&#x2F;b&gt;&lt;&#x2F;p&gt;\n&lt;p</a> class=&quot;calibre3&quot;&gt;##g&#x27; *.xhtml
...<p>Then inspect the history around those commands to find exactly how I got to that point.