Delete a Command from ZSH history 📚

A while ago, I restored this site's production database to a backup captured 24 hours earlier (the reason isn't important). Now in my terminal history, heroku pg:backups:restore a719 DATABASE_URL -rproduction is just hanging out, ready for me to accidentally smash, sending our production database hurtling back into the past. How do I remove this destructive command from my history?

In my terminal, ZSH, there's a file called ~/.zsh_history, and a similar one for Bash. To remove the command, open that file and remove the entry from the list.

cat somefile
heroku pg:backups:restore a719 DATABASE_URL -rproduction # delete me!
ls

Open a new terminal window, and the bad command is gone.

To avoid this situation, consider the following setting (thanks Dillon!):

# ~/.zshrc
setopt HIST_IGNORE_SPACE

With this, any command preceded by a space is excluded from history. One could alias a destructive command to itself, preceded by a space, and save themselves a headache. Note a weird bug here: the last command appears in history, even if it should be excluded, until another command is entered. Banish it to the ether by running just an empty space as a command.

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