ZSH / BASH : Delete specific lines from history

Question

My history is 'polluted' with some specific lines that have typo's and such. For example: I often have to ssh to a certain server like so:

ssh foo-bar@domain.tld
> Connects succesfully

But I also make a typo sometimes:

ssh bar-foo@domain.tld
> Permission denied

Because I rely on history this typo is duplicated multiple times:

cat .zsh_history | grep bar-foo@domain.tld
> : 1510301683:0;ssh bar-foo@domain.tld
> : 1511166682:0;ssh bar-foo@domain.tld
> : 1511193552:0;ssh bar-foo@domain.tld
> : 1512730972:0;ssh bar-foo@domain.tld
> : 1516368993:0;ssh bar-foo@domain.tld
> : 1516802690:0;ssh bar-foo@domain.tld
> : 1519633368:0;ssh bar-foo@domain.tld

Is there an easy way to clean up my history purely by the results of the grep-command? (or perhaps there's some other, more clever solution?)

Update:

Please note: I am not looking for a way to delete line x from the history; I know there are plenty of articles out there that cover that. I'm simply looking for a (simple?) way to delete all lines that contain string y.

Possible duplicate of Remove a certain line from Bash history file — agc, Apr 24 '18 at 07:26
Not sure if it's a duplicate. I just want to clean my history by deleting all lines that contain string x. The linked question is how to delete by line numbers. — Giel Berkers, Apr 24 '18 at 08:33
You might be interested in zsh's option HIST_IGNORE_ALL_DUPS in order to not stor duplicates in your history at all: If a new command line being added to the history list duplicates an older one, the older command is removed from the list (even if it is not the previous event). — mpy, Apr 24 '18 at 16:36
@GielBerkers, Remove a certain line from Bash history file seems quite general, with answers using various methods. The simplest grep fix is in a comment by *mivk, which prints out the needed commands, (without actually running them): history | grep XYZ | grep -v grep | tac | awk '{print "history -d", $1}' — agc, Apr 25 '18 at 00:59

Marlon Richert · Answer 1 · 2022-08-27T10:44:24.780

This function will remove any one line you want from your Zsh history, no questions asked:

# Accepts one history line number as argument.
# Alternatively, you can do `dc -1` to remove the last line.
dc () {
  # Prevent the specified history line from being saved.
  local HISTORY_IGNORE="${(b)$(fc -ln $1 $1)}"
Write out the history to file, excluding lines that match $HISTORY_IGNORE.
fc -W
Dispose of the current history and read the new history from file.
fc -p $HISTFILE $HISTSIZE $SAVEHIST
TA-DA!
print "Deleted '$HISTORY_IGNORE' from history."
}

If you want to additionally prevent all dc commands from being written to history, add the following in your ~/.zshrc file:

zshaddhistory() {
 [[ $1 != 'dc '* ]]
}

Alternatively, for a more comprehensive solution, try my Zsh Edit plugin.

@GielBerkers Does this answer your question/solve your problem? — Marlon Richert, Jan 23 '21 at 16:16

mafiaman42 · Answer 2 · 2018-04-24T08:51:06.040

0

You can use this command to delete properly all lines with the string in the history :

sed -i '/string/d' .bash_history

edited Apr 24 '18 at 08:51

answered Apr 24 '18 at 08:37

mafiaman42

11

ZSH / BASH : Delete specific lines from history

2 Answers2

Write out the history to file, excluding lines that match `$HISTORY_IGNORE`.

Dispose of the current history and read the new history from file.

TA-DA!