ipython tutorial and how to delete sensitive data from history

ipython is program which allows you to run python code in an interactive shell. Although Python itself when run from CLI opens an interactive shell as well, ipython is much more powerful and greatly improves your productivity. Some of the things you can do with ipython but not the default python shell is command or code and file name completion, view history, copy/paste a single or multiline code, nicely colored help with in the shell, run Linux commands such as ls or cat, scroll up/down to previous commands, automatically adds spaces after you press enter, etc.

Installation

pip install ipython

Quick demo
Start ipython by typing the

ipython

command in your CLI –

daniel@lindell:/tmp$ ipython
Python 2.7.12 (default, Nov 19 2016, 06:48:10) 
Type "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

IPython 5.4.1 -- An enhanced Interactive Python.
?         -> Introduction and overview of IPython's features.
%quickref -> Quick reference.
help      -> Python's own help system.
object?   -> Details about 'object', use 'object??' for extra details.

In [1]: print('ipython')
ipython

In [2]: 

With in the ipython interactive shell you can run any python code, let us walk through some examples –

  In [1]: x=2

In [2]: x
Out[2]: 2

In [3]: mylist=[1,2,3,4,5]

In [4]: [i**3 for i in mylist]
Out[4]: [1, 8, 27, 64, 125]

In [5]: with open('/etc/hosts') as fp:
   ...:     for line in fp:
   ...:         if 'localhost' in line:
   ...:             print line
   ...:             
127.0.0.1	localhost

::1     ip6-localhost ip6-loopback


In [6]: ls /opt/
ansible/  google/  vagrant/

In [7]: 

Go back to previously typed commands / History
With ipython, you can either press the UP arrow key or type

 history 

command to view history. ipython keeps session history as well as all input and output lines in a SQLite file which is located in

~/.ipython/profile_default/history.sqlite 

You can view and modify this file using

sqlite3

tool –

daniel@lindell:/tmp$ sqlite3 ~/.ipython/profile_default/history.sqlite
SQLite version 3.11.0 2016-02-15 17:29:24
Enter ".help" for usage hints.
sqlite> .schema
CREATE TABLE sessions (session integer
                        primary key autoincrement, start timestamp,
                        end timestamp, num_cmds integer, remark text);
CREATE TABLE history
                (session integer, line integer, source text, source_raw text,
                PRIMARY KEY (session, line));
CREATE TABLE output_history
                        (session integer, line integer, output text,
                        PRIMARY KEY (session, line));
sqlite> 

Deleting sensitive data from history
You can delete any line from history by using SQL. First use SELECT statement to find the line number and then use DELETE statement to delete it. In this example, we are deleting line number 10 from the history table –

sqlite> select * from history;
sqlite> .schema history
CREATE TABLE history
                (session integer, line integer, source text, source_raw text,
                PRIMARY KEY (session, line));
sqlite> delete from history where line=10;

References –
https://ipython.org/
http://www.sqlitetutorial.net/sqlite-delete/