Even though the Mac OS does great with all the graphic user interface, there will be times when one needs to dig into the internals of the underlying system through the shell (Terminal). Even more so when you deal with programming of any sort.
For those who are nitpicky about options and settings like me, you will probably want to meddle with configurations whenever possible. When it comes to the Terminal application, I have always hated how Terminal logs down all commands in previous sessions. I have this thing about unnecessary logging and I certainly do not think that I need them when I use my Terminal application in Leopard.
In addition, I would like to have some color in the typical black and white Terminal world when the occasional need for listing folders and files arises. All it takes is to edit either the user bash configuration ".profile" file in your home folder or the system wide bash configuration "profile" file in the "etc" folder. Editing the user bash is definitely more advisable than the system-wide configuration.
The lines to add are as below:
unset HISTFILE export CLICOLOR=1
Pretty self-explanatory, "unset HISTFILE" prevents the Terminal from saving the session when you close it, basically clearing whatever command history in the closed session. The latter line basically enables the Terminal to use color. Nice and dandy.