When you are using Linux command line frequently, using the history effectively can be a major productivity boost. In fact, once you have mastered the 15 examples that I’ve provided here, you’ll find using command line more enjoyable and fun.

10. Force history not to remember a particular command using HISTCONTROL
When you execute a command, you can instruct history to ignore the command by setting HISTCONTROL to ignorespace AND typing a space in front of the command as shown below. I can see lot of junior sysadmins getting excited about this, as they can hide a command from the history. It is good to understand how ignorespace works. But, as a best practice, don’t hide purposefully anything from history.

# export HISTCONTROL=ignorespace
# ls -ltr
# pwd
# service httpd stop [Note that there is a space at the beginning of service, to ignore this command from history]
# history | tail -3
67 ls -ltr
68 pwd
69 history | tail -3

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