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

Option	Description
-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

Option	Description
-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

Option	Description
-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

---

Article Number: 484
Posted: Mon, Feb 18, 2019 2:37 PM
Last Updated: Mon, Feb 18, 2019 2:37 PM

Online URL: http://kb.ictbanking.net/article.php?id=484