On Wed, Feb 19, 2025, at 9:48 PM, Dale R. Worley wrote: > What it is really doing is "declare foo to > be the history file, and then read its contents and put them in the > history list". The problem as I see it is that the easiest to spot part > of the documentation is > > -r Read the contents of the history file and append them to > the current history list. > > which states the (secondary) reading but doesn't mention the (primary) > setting of what the history file *is*. > > What I'd prefer is something like > > -r Set filename (or $HISTFILE) to be the history file. > Read the contents of the history file and append them to > the current history list. > > That emphasizes the primary effect of the command.
What? As Andreas already explained, ''history -r foo'' reads foo, and ''history -r'' reads $HISTFILE. That's it. The documentation refers to "the history file" to avoid saying "_filename_ (or $HISTFILE if _filename_ is not specified)" over and over and over, but "the history file" is not a meaningful bit of state that the shell keeps track of. You invented it out of thin air. (If anything counts as "the history file", surely it's $HISTFILE.) -- vq
