Execute a command without keeping it in history [closed]

Solution 1:

Start your command with a space and it won't be included in the history.

Be aware that this does require the environment variable $HISTCONTROL to be set.

Check that the following command returns ignorespace or ignoreboth:
```
 echo $HISTCONTROL
```
To add the environment variable if missing, the following line can be added to the Bash profile. E.g., to file %HOME/.bashrc.
```
 export HISTCONTROL=ignorespace
```

After sourcing the profile again, space-prefixed commands will not be written to $HISTFILE.

In any given Bash session, set the history file to /dev/null by typing:

export HISTFILE=/dev/null

Note that, as pointed out in the comments, this will not write any commands in that session to the history!

Just don't mess with your system administrator's hard work, please ;)

Doodad's solution is more elegant. Simply unset the variable: unset HISTFILE (thanks!)

echo "discreet";history -d $(history 1)