A preceding space prevents dangerous commands from going into history (#tilPost)

Assim Hussain shared on Twitter that he executed a dangerous command by mistake. The command was still accessible in his shell history, and he pressed the UP arrow one time too much.
I have been in that situation, and you may have b…

Assim Hussain shared on Twitter that he executed a dangerous command by mistake. The command was still accessible in his shell history, and he pressed the UP arrow one time too much.

I have been in that situation, and you may have been, also. ?

I like about Twitter that sometimes people reply with useful tips to avoid future mistakes. So did Philippe Martin. He shared that commands executed with a preceding space will not go it into the session history. That sounds great!

# command goes into the history
$ delete everything

# command does not go into the history
$  delete everything

I tried it right away, but it didn’t work. I’m a Zsh user, and it turns out that you have to enable it via a config in your .zshrc.

setopt histignorespace

In bash, it should work right away (not tested).

Edited: In bash, the environment variable HISTCONTROL has to be set.

There is one thing to mention though. After the execution of a command, every command will be accessible by pressing the UP arrow (this is a feature). Only when you execute another command preceding space command will be inaccessible.

This little trick prevents your future self from executing a dangerous command when pressing the UP arrow one time too much. ?



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Stefan Judis | Sciencx (2024-03-29T14:07:18+00:00) » A preceding space prevents dangerous commands from going into history (#tilPost). Retrieved from https://www.scien.cx/2018/12/29/a-preceding-space-prevents-dangerous-commands-from-going-into-history-tilpost/.
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" » A preceding space prevents dangerous commands from going into history (#tilPost)." Stefan Judis | Sciencx - Saturday December 29, 2018, https://www.scien.cx/2018/12/29/a-preceding-space-prevents-dangerous-commands-from-going-into-history-tilpost/
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" » A preceding space prevents dangerous commands from going into history (#tilPost)." Stefan Judis | Sciencx [Online]. Available: https://www.scien.cx/2018/12/29/a-preceding-space-prevents-dangerous-commands-from-going-into-history-tilpost/. [Accessed: 2024-03-29T14:07:18+00:00]
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» A preceding space prevents dangerous commands from going into history (#tilPost) | Stefan Judis | Sciencx | https://www.scien.cx/2018/12/29/a-preceding-space-prevents-dangerous-commands-from-going-into-history-tilpost/ | 2024-03-29T14:07:18+00:00
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