Remove a certain line from Bash history file
How can I remove a certain line from history
's database?
You need to log out and back in or run history -a
so the current history is committed to disk.
Then just edit the file ~/.bash_history
.
You can achieve removal from the history file using the commandline in two steps:
- Typing
history -d <line_number>
deletes a specified line from the history in memory. - Typing
history -w
writes the current in-memory history to the~/.bash_history
file.
The two steps together remove the line permanently from the in-memory history and from the .bash_history file as well.
To prevent a command from being added to the history in the first place, make sure that the environment variable HISTCONTROL
contains among its colon-separated values the value ignorespace
, for example (add e.g. to .bashrc
):
$ export HISTCONTROL=ignorespace
This will prevent any command with a leading space from being added to the history. You can then clear the history completely by running
$ history -c -w
^-- additional space character