LKBEN11167: Howto clear the bash history
LKB | Created: 02/04/2020 | Version: 0 | Language: EN | Rating: 0 | Outdated: False | Marked for deletion: False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 in different European countries and different European languages. He writes knowledge base articles to solve IT problems and publishes them on the Lubby Knowledge Platform where he is one of the most important contributors and the main developer.