Execute a command without keeping it in history [closed]

Question

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)

An extension of John Doe's and Cédric ROYER's answer. But, this seems to work for me.

<your_secret_command>; history -d $((HISTCMD-1))

You should not see the entry of the command in your history.

Here's the explanation...

The 'history -d' deletes the mentioned entry from the history.

The HISTCMD stores the command_number of the one to be executed next. So, (HISTCMD-1) refers to the last executed command.

Remove a certain line from Bash history file

You might consider using a shell without history, like perhaps

/bin/sh << END
   your commands without history
END

(perhaps /bin/dash or /bin/sash could be more appropriate than /bin/sh)

Or even better, use the batch utility, e.g.,

batch << EOB
   your commands
EOB

The history would then contain sh or batch which is not very meaningful.