LKBEN11167: Howto clear the bash history

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LKB | Created: 02/04/2020 | Version: 0 | Language: EN | Rating: 0 | Outdated: False | Marked for deletion: False

Author: Wim Peeters - Keskon GmbH & Co. KG

Symptom

You would like to clear the bash history file

Cause

none

Solution


Your shell gets the history information from the file .bash_history or .history. Actions on it will not clear the history because it is stored in RAM and on disk. Even when you delete the file, the contents will be rewritten when the session ends.
The better way to clear your history is to use the history command with the parameter -c. This will clear the contents in RAM and on disk.

so:

history -c

will do the job.

About the Author

Wim Peeters is electronics engineer with an additional master in IT and over 30 years of experience, including time spent in support, development, consulting, training and database administration. Wim has worked with SQL Server since version 6.5. He has developed in C/C++, Java and C# on Windows and Linux. He writes knowledge base articles to solve IT problems and publishes them on the Lubby Knowledge Platform.

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