# History not showing (arrow up)

**URL:** <https://swi-prolog.discourse.group/t/history-not-showing-arrow-up/552>\
**Category:** Help!\
**Created:** [April 17, 2019, 5:04pm UTC](https://swi-prolog.discourse.group/t/history-not-showing-arrow-up/552 "2019-04-17T17:04:04Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![damiazz94](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d2c977/32.png) [@damiazz94](https://swi-prolog.discourse.group/u/damiazz94)\
**Post date:** [April 17, 2019, 5:04pm UTC](https://swi-prolog.discourse.group/t/history-not-showing-arrow-up/552/1 "2019-04-17T17:04:04Z")

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Hi. I’ve just cloned the repo from github and installed swi.  
However, in the prompt, when i try to press arrow up to show the history, it does not print the last command but ^[[A (same for arrow down, left and right with different codes).  
I’m using SWI-Prolog version 8.1.4-32-g2d20d4e8a-DIRTY on Ubuntu 16.04.  
A previous version installed using apt works well.

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**Author:** ![jan](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/swi-prolog.discourse.group/jan/32/4_2.png) [@jan](https://swi-prolog.discourse.group/u/jan)\
**Post date:** [April 18, 2019, 6:29am UTC](https://swi-prolog.discourse.group/t/history-not-showing-arrow-up/552/2 "2019-04-18T06:29:48Z")

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Seems you didn’t build the packages or you didn’t install the prerequisites. See CMAKE.md for building and [http://www.swi-prolog.org/build/Debian.txt](http://www.swi-prolog.org/build/Debian.txt) for the prerequisites.

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**Author:** ![edom](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/swi-prolog.discourse.group/edom/32/522_2.png) [@edom](https://swi-prolog.discourse.group/u/edom)\
**Post date:** [April 18, 2019, 7:24am UTC](https://swi-prolog.discourse.group/t/history-not-showing-arrow-up/552/3 "2019-04-18T07:24:51Z")

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You have to install `libreadline-dev` before building the source code.

After installation, you have to enable readline by adding this in your ~/.swiplrc:

```prolog
:- set_prolog_flag(readline, readline).

```

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**Author:** ![jan](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/swi-prolog.discourse.group/jan/32/4_2.png) [@jan](https://swi-prolog.discourse.group/u/jan)\
**Post date:** [April 18, 2019, 7:39am UTC](https://swi-prolog.discourse.group/t/history-not-showing-arrow-up/552/4 "2019-04-18T07:39:45Z")

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The last step is not needed unless you have both libedit and libreadline packages built and you want libreadline instead of the default libedit.

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**Author:** ![damiazz94](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d2c977/32.png) [@damiazz94](https://swi-prolog.discourse.group/u/damiazz94)\
**Post date:** [April 18, 2019, 9:04pm UTC](https://swi-prolog.discourse.group/t/history-not-showing-arrow-up/552/5 "2019-04-18T21:04:05Z")

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Fixed, thanks!