I would like to delete all history entries matching a certain string. I found this method:
grep -v searchstring "$HISTFILE" > /tmp/history mv /tmp/history "$HISTFILE" but it does not account for the HISTTIMEFORMAT comments, for example:
#1517681911 echo 1 #1517681918 echo 2 #1517681931 echo 3 If I wanted to remove "echo 2", the preceding comment would need to be removed as well. How can I do this?
Sed is your friend (awk could do it as well), you may use this code (assuming every line matched indeed has a time line):
sed '$!N;/echo 2/!P;D' "$HISTFILE" > /tmp/history or to do it directly in the history file:
sed -i '$!N;/echo 2/!P;D' "$HISTFILE" The example you have will become this:
#1517681911 echo 1 #1517681931 echo 3 A more restrictive match: only erase actual time lines before the pattern (match lines that have one field that is a # followed by ten digits)
awk -vp="echo 2" ' {b=$0};b~p{next} NF=1 && b~/#[0-9]{10}/{a=b;next} {print(a RS b)} ' "$HISTFILE"