How to delete Bash command history in Linux

Bash History:- Bash history keeps the history of commands executed by user in the terminal session. This allow us to re-use previous commands using up arrow key or we can run history command to check whole list of commands.

Generally, it's not required to delete any command from the history but some time we need to delete few commands.
Example-  By mistake, In a command i have entered password in plain text format and I don't want let the history record this password. In this case i will delete that command from the history.

Let's have a look at command below.

During MySQL connection command, i mentioned password in command. as in picture below.

root@PVM-Linux-UDev:~# history 

Now, I want to delete this command from the history list.

Let's use below command to delete the specific command from the history.

To delete single command use following command.

root@PVM-Linux-UDev:~# history -d 2008

In the above command use command ID with history -d command .
Let's confirm deleted entry using history command.

root@PVM-Linux-UDev:~# history 

To clear entire command list use following command.

root@PVM-Linux-UDev:~# history -c

Using history -c command,  you can clear entire bash history. See in above example nothing is there.

Alternatively you can run below command to clear entire bash history.

root@PVM-Linux-UDev:~# cat /dev/null > ~/.bash_history 

Please note:- Generally, Normal user can view his own bash history and can perform any action over them. But root user and view anyone's bash history.