[Info-vax] Unix and DCL shells

[Dan Cross]

In article <unhkr1$1lj0v$1 at dont-email.me>, chrisq  <devzero at nospam.com> wrote:
>On 1/8/24 19:02, mjos_examine wrote:
>> On 2024-01-08 9:38 a.m., Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>>> On 2024-01-08 9:21 a.m., Simon Clubley wrote:
>>>> >> Synchronised permanent storage of command history across sessions.
>>>> Supports
>>>> using multiple sessions at the same time and only writes the changes 
>>>> from
>>>> that session to the history file.
>>>
>>> I usually just write a COM file if I want to preserve my commands.
>>>
>>> But other may like the history you propose.
>> 
>> I have to agree that being able to up-arrow through commands done during 
>> my last session, whether 5 minutes, or 5 days, or 5 months later, can be 
>> very useful and convenient.
>> 
>> Couple that with the sister-feature of being able to back-scroll through 
>> all the terminal output from the last session, and now you are really 
>> talking useful and convenient.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>
>One of the most irritating things about working on terminal
>based systems was the lack of command line recall. To be fair
>though, early unix systems with csh or sh lacked that as well.
>Solution here was to select tcsh, which did have command line recall
>capability, even back in the early 1990's

`csh` certainly had command history, though not "recall" in the
sense of using an arror key or ^P or something to bring a
previously executed back back to the prompt for editing.  Korn's
shell had similar functionality, and various people hacked it
into `sh` at different times.

tcsh, bash, zsh all had such functionality in the early 1990s,
of course, using both the csh syntax as well as the ability;
tcsh starting in the 80s.  ksh (at least 93) might be
configurable to do something similar, but I can't recall now.

>Not a problem now, bash, csh and perhaps others. all support command
>line recall, with cmdline buffer length a terminal setup parameter.
>history (aliased h), shows the whole list, with !<line number>, 
>selecting and running any item.
>
>Can be a steep learning curve, and easily forgotten without use,
>but so much workflow power in the unix shell...

Yup.

	- Dan C.