Simon Tatham wrote an article recently called “Policy of transience”, explaining (among other things) why you might want to disable your shell history file. All the shell history I allow myself is localised and short-term. So instead I put it somewhere else: maybe a shell function in my .bashrc , or maybe a shell script in my directory of random useful scriptlets. I rely heavily on my shell history to remember how I did things before. For myself, I don’t want my shell history to be opt-in.