HowTo: Clear BASH History

Sometimes you don’t want to leave Bash history, because it may contain some sensitive data (e.g. passwords, tokens, etc.).

This article will help you to take a full control on your .bash_history file.

I will show how to clear the commands history for the current Bash session, how to prevent particular commands from being recorded to the .bash_history file and how to completely erase the Bash history.

Cool Tip: How to clear a commands history in Git Bash! Read More →

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
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3 Replies to “HowTo: Clear BASH History”

  1. Команда history -cw очищает только текущую историю, но при перезапуске терминала просто добавляет в историю ещё одну команду.

  2. Cat / dev / null> ~ / .bash_history && history -c && exit.

  3. kill -9 $$

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