HowTo: Clear BASH History

Sometimes you don’t want to leave Bash history, because it may contain some sensitive data like passwords.

This article may help you to control your Bash history file.

Clear Bash history completely

Type the following command to clear all your Bash history:

$ history -cw
OptionDescription
-c Clear the history list
-w Write out the current history to the history file

Remove a certain line from Bash history

Type the following command to remove a certain line (e.g. 352) from the Bash history file:

$ history -dw 352
OptionDescription
-d Delete specified line from the history

Clear current session history

Type the following command to clear the Bash history of the current session only:

$ history -r
OptionDescription
-r Read the current history file and append its contents to the history list

Don’t save command in Bash history

Execute a command without saving it in the Bash history:

$ <space>command

Put a space in front of your command and it won’t be saved in the Bash history.

Don’t save commands in Bash history for current session

Unsetting HISTFILE will cause any commands that you have executed in the current shell session not to be written in your bash_history file upon logout:

$ unset HISTFILE
0 (0)
Article Rating (No Votes)
Rate this article
Attachments
There are no attachments for this article.
Comments
There are no comments for this article. Be the first to post a comment.
Full Name
Email Address
Security Code Security Code
Related Articles RSS Feed
Time conversion using Bash
Viewed 2404 times since Fri, May 25, 2018
Adding a range of IPs in Linux
Viewed 2332 times since Mon, May 21, 2018
Tunneling With SSH to Your Destination
Viewed 3831 times since Wed, May 30, 2018
8 Practical Examples of Linux Xargs Command for Beginners
Viewed 4952 times since Fri, Jun 1, 2018
Bash: Read File Line By Line – While Read Line Loop
Viewed 1751 times since Mon, Feb 18, 2019
Bash: String Length – How To Find Out
Viewed 1951 times since Mon, Feb 18, 2019
Epoch & Unix Timestamp Conversion Tools
Viewed 45361 times since Fri, Jun 22, 2018
The Ultimate Bash Array Tutorial with 15 Examples
Viewed 12560 times since Sun, Sep 30, 2018
awk printf
Viewed 14316 times since Wed, Aug 19, 2020
How to sort IP addresses in Linux
Viewed 3404 times since Thu, May 24, 2018