Temporarily Disabling History in zsh
In the zsh shell, the history file is used to store commands that have been previously executed. This feature can be useful for quickly recalling previous commands. However, there may be situations where you want to prevent new commands from being added to the history file, such as when working on sensitive information or sharing a terminal with others.
Unsetting the History File
To temporarily disable the recording of commands in the history file in zsh, you can unset the HISTFILE variable. This can be done by running the following command:
unset HISTFILE
This command will prevent zsh from writing new commands to the history file. Once you are finished working and want to start recording commands again, you can set the HISTFILE variable back to its default value:
set HISTFILE=$HOME/.zsh_history
Stopping the Recording of Commands
Another way to temporarily disable the recording of commands in zsh is to use the fc -p command. This command allows you to edit the history file directly, but it also stops the recording of new commands:
fc -p /dev/null > ~/.zsh_history
This command will create a new empty history file, effectively stopping the recording of new commands. To start recording commands again, you can delete the empty history file and let zsh create a new one:
rm ~/.zsh_history
unset HISTFILE- Unsets the HISTFILE variable to prevent new commands from being added to the history file.fc -p /dev/null > ~/.zsh_history- Creates a new empty history file, effectively stopping the recording of new commands.