How do I clear my Bash history in OS X?

Question

How do I clear my Bash history in Mac OS X?

I've entered a few "errors" and just want to clear them off. How do I do that?

score 7 · Answer 1 · edited May 01 '14 at 12:05

7

To clear it, just delete the ~/.bash_history file. If you want to just remove the offending lines you can open ~/.bash_history in the editor of your choice. For me, this would be

emacs ~/.bash_history

and then going to the beginning of each bad line and pressing control ^+K.

Or your can just fill your .bash_history with empty. Run this: (including the >)

 > ~/.bash_history

edited May 01 '14 at 12:05

nohillside

100,768

answered May 01 '14 at 01:08

0942v8653

7,412

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered May 28 '14 at 01:12

3

You can run:

history -c

I use it often, so I made an alias to hc.

answered May 28 '14 at 01:12

Thi G.

2,284

Just to note, this works for clearing history from the current shell while my answer is for sessions that have already been closed. – 0942v8653 May 28 '14 at 01:26

score 2 · Answer 3 · answered May 28 '14 at 01:23

To view your bash history enter the command:

history

You will get an index of your history.

You can clear your entire history like so:

history -c

You can clear the 45th item in your history like so:

history -d 45

(get you can see the history item numbers by executing the history command)

How do I clear my Bash history in OS X?

3 Answers3