How can I stop less from storing history?
Open a terminal and create a file .lesskey
, in your home folder and append the following to it:
#env
LESSHISTSIZE=0
If you already have the file .lesshst
in your home folder, then delete it and type the command
lesskey
You should get any errors here. This will not store any history of less
from now on, until you change the .lesskey
file.
From the man page of less:
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
Environment variables may be specified either in the system environment as usual, or in a lesskey (1) file. If environment variables are defined in more than one place, variables defined in a local lesskey file take precedence over variables defined in the system environment, which take precedence over variables defined in the system-wide lesskey file.
LESSHISTSIZE
The maximum number of commands to save in the history file. The default is 100.
EDIT:
From the comments, I found a better way to prevent having a history file for less.
In the .lesskey
file in the home folder, append this:
LESSHISTFILE=-
or
LESSHISTFILE=/dev/null
If you put this in your ~/.bashrc
file, this will work, but will have a lower precedence if you have other values in your .lesskey
file for the same variables.
You may want to have a look at this:
- How to make
less
more friendly