TIP: How to clear the command history using zsh

[letallan]

Hello there,

At the end of Lesson 5, in the "Better Private Key Management" section, Patrick shows a way to clear the command history from the terminal (to hide the password to the encrypted private key).

I have zsh installed, not bash, and it uses a different command to clear the command history. The problem is that the history -p command in zsh only clears the history during the local session. I did a little experiment and found that:

1. If you type some commands in the local terminal instance, then delete them with history -p and restart the terminal, they will be saved in the history file (including our password for the private key), despite the fact that they were deleted in the local terminal instance.
2. This history is saved because it is not deleted from the history file in the root directory: .zsh_history
3. The only way I have found to actually delete the command history is to enter these two commands (order is important):

rm ./.zsh_history && history -p

I hope it will be useful to someone :)

[PatrickAlphaC]

Awesome tip!