use-a-space-to-exclude-command-from-history.md

Use A Space To Exclude Command From History

When using a shell like zsh, you get the benefit of it keeping track of the history of the commands you've entered into the shell. This means you can quickly traverse pack to a previous command that you want to run again. It also means a tool like fzf can hook into your history file so that you can fuzzy-search for a command you may have executed weeks ago.

The history is stored on your machine in a plaintext file. Not every command should be stored in a plaintext file. For instance, you don't want zsh to persist a command that includes a password.

With the histignorespace option enabled in zsh, we can put a leading space in front of our command and it will be excluded from the history file.

Try it yourself:

$ echo 'this command will be remembered'
this command will be remembered

$  echo 'this command will be forgotten'
this command will be forgotten

Notice the leading space in the second command. Trying pressing your up arrow and notice only that first echo is remembered.

Make sure histignorespace is included in the list when you run setopt. If it isn't, then add it:

$ setopt histignorespace

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