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

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

Clear current session history

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

$ history -r

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