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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-27T12:05:58+00:00

When doing software development, there is often need to include confidential information in command

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When doing software development, there is often need to include confidential information in command line commands. Typical example is setting credentials for deploying the project to a server as environment variables.

How can I execute some commands, when I don’t want to store them in the command history?

Nobody must be able to search them in the .bash_history file. Is there a way how to execute Bash commands this way?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Start your command with a space and it won’t be included in the history.

    Be aware that this does require the environment variable $HISTCONTROL to be set.

    • Check that the following command returns ignorespace or
      ignoreboth:

       echo $HISTCONTROL

    • To add the environment variable if missing, the following line can be added to the Bash profile. E.g., to file %HOME/.bashrc.

       export HISTCONTROL=ignorespace

    After sourcing the profile again, space-prefixed commands will not be written to $HISTFILE.

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