• survivalmachine@beehaw.org
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    10 months ago

    history displays a list of all commands you have run on the terminal since the history list was last cleared. It is invaluable for referring back to a big complex command or set of commands you ran at some point in the past. The -c flag clears that history.

    • umbrella@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      10 months ago

      dont you also need history -w to save it?

      on ubuntu -c doesnt actually clear it unless you also use -w

      • survivalmachine@beehaw.org
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        10 months ago

        Yes, my comment only applies to the shell history in memory. -c clears history immediately, but you can still reload it from disk if you haven’t overwritten that with -w. If you tend to close your terminal windows frequently and rely on the history feature between sessions, it would benefit you to learn about the intricacies of the on-disk copy of history and how its affected by writes, appends, clears, crashes, etc. I tend to leave my terminal windows open a long time and copy any complex commands out to my PKM if I need to save them for future sessions, so I generally try not to rely on .bash_history, but it has saved my bacon on more than one occasion.