Find / Replace

Remove all lines that contain a specific string

To remove any lines that contain a string you will want to use the global search :g and the d flag for delete.

:g/<string>/d

This will remove the entire line not just the string passed.

Example

I often see where people use the -p flag with the password passed directly into the command when doing mysql queries on servers. This is something that you shouldn't do. I don't want the passwords in the bash history so I remove them.

~/.bash_history

ls -la
cat ~/.zshrc
mysql -u root -p TeHpASSword
tar -zcf dump.tar.gz dump.sql
mysql -u root -p TeHpASSword

After opening in VIM I would do the following:

:g/mysql/d

Which would result in the file contents being:

~/.bash_history

ls -la
cat ~/.zshrc
tar -zcf dump.tar.gz dump.sql

Now you can just save and close with :wq and now the mysql references are no longer in the history.

You will need to close and reopen terminal for it to take place and if you are using zsh you will want to check the ~/.zsh_history file.