Bash History

You can hide a command from history by prepending it with a space:

echo "I will end up in history :("
 echo "I will be hidden! :)"

This is useful when you want to quickly try a command, without it filling up Bash history. It can also be useful to quickly view a help or man page, as follows:

  git help
  man bash | less +'/HISTCONTROL'

Make sure you have HISTCONTROL set to ignorespace or ignoreboth in your .bashrc for this to work:

# ~/.bashrc

HISTCONTROL=ignoreboth

Or if you’re using ZSH, add the following to your .zshrc file:

# ~/.zshrc

setopt HIST_IGNORE_SPACE

Tip: This also works for most other shells, check the documentation on how to set it up in your preferred shell!