Problem using history command

[TonyB]

I'm getting unexpected results using the history command in a bash shell using kernal 2.6.22.18.  I would expect the line

history > historylog.txt

to save the contents of the history file into file historylog.txt but the file is always empty.  Similar command lines in the sheel produce files as expected.

If I execute the same line at the command prompt the target file is created as expected.  I don't see this on other ubuntu machines.  Any thoughts on this?

Regards,
Tony