Track the shell history of specific users

Use this script to track and keep a record of the shell history of specific users.
#!/bin/ksh
#
# Script to invoke ksh with invoking user specific shell history file.
#
# See if "-" has been pased on command line. If so then the switch user should
# be the second argument. If not it should be the first argument.
if [ $1 = - ]
then SWUSER=$2
else SWUSER=$1
fi

# Set variable for home directory switch user.
SWUSERHOME=`ls -d ~$SWUSER`

# Set user name of invoking user to be used as suffix for shell history file.
RLUSER=`who am i |awk '{print $1}'`

# Run system su with arguments passed in and creating individual shell history
# file in the directory determined above.

su $@ -c "HISTFILE=$SWUSERHOME/.sh_history.$RLUSER;export HISTFILE;exec ksh -o vi"

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This was first published in February 2003

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