Hi users,

I would like to clear the history of commands I typed in the shell. I
did some research and concluded that the history of commands are in
the .sh_history file.

So I removed the file .sh_history. But still when I type h, i see a
history of commands.

Could anyone tell me what to do to clear the history of commands.

Second question is how can I find out which unix shell I am working
on?

Thanks
astrorail

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2004-09-8, 09:10(-07), astrorail:
> I would like to clear the history of commands I typed in the shell. I
> did some research and concluded that the history of commands are in
> the .sh_history file.
>
> So I removed the file .sh_history. But still when I type h, i see a
> history of commands.
>
> Could anyone tell me what to do to clear the history of commands.

If your shell is zsh,
HISTSIZE=0

Or, just restart your shell:

exec "$0"
(after having removed your history file).

> Second question is how can I find out which unix shell I am working
> on?
[...]

ps
or
printf '%s\n' "$0"

should give an indication.

--
Stephane

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Hi stephane,

my shell is tcsh.
i restarted the shell but the h command still shows the history
commands. May be I am not deleting the proper history file.

I have deleted the .sh_history file.

exec "$0" returns with a message
-tcsh: Command not found.

help,

astrorail

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On 8 Sep 2004 09:10:30 -0700, astrorail <srinee@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi users,
>
> Could anyone tell me what to do to clear the history of commands.

Why would you want to do that?  If it's your system, there's nothing
in there that you would want to hide, and if it's not your system,
why are you doing things you'd want to hide?

> Second question is how can I find out which unix shell I am working
> on?

echo $SHELL works on some, most, or all unixes.  Are you using any
particular one?

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astrorail <srinee@gmail.com> wrote:
> exec "$0" returns with a message
> -tcsh: Command not found.

grep $LOGNAME /etc/passwd|awk -F: '{ print $7 }'

This will tell you how to invoke your shell.

> my shell is tcsh.
> i restarted the shell but the h command still shows the history
> commands. May be I am not deleting the proper history file.

Look at the man page of your shell to find out about command history.

Yours,
Laurenz Albe

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2004-09-8, 10:51(-07), astrorail:
> my shell is tcsh.
> i restarted the shell but the h command still shows the history
> commands. May be I am not deleting the proper history file.
>
> I have deleted the .sh_history file.
>
> exec "$0" returns with a message
> -tcsh: Command not found.
[...]

Yes, $0 is -tcsh because it's a login shell.

Use

exec tcsh

(note that I doubt tcsh history file is named .sh_<something>.
Check your tcsh man page. Note you'll often find recommended to
switch to a Bourne like shell, and zsh is a best choice then,
especially when you're a former (t)csh user).

--
Stephane

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