Re: [RFC PATCH 3/3] FAQ: sync newuser-install

[Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Sat, Sep 3, 2022 at 8:39 AM Roman Perepelitsa
<roman.perepelitsa@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Sep 2, 2022 at 5:46 AM Mikael Magnusson <mikachu@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> >
> > SAVEHIST greater than HISTSIZE is always equivalent to
> > its being equal to HISTSIZE [...]
>
> I believe this is the case as far as using history from within zsh is
> concerned. If I understand correctly, Felipe wants to have fewer
> commands available in history when using zsh than what is stored in
> HISTFILE. I'm not sure under which circumstances this can be desired.
> Perhaps when working on a system with very little RAM, plenty of disk
> space and no swap? In any case, I wouldn't recommend using such a
> configuration to beginners because it's bound to cause confusion. It
> can be surprising when some lines from HISTFILE aren't available when
> searching or printing history from within zsh.

No, this is not what I want. It doesn't matter what I want.

My point is that new users do not necessarily understand what HISTSIZE
and SAVEHIST mean, and they don't have to.

SAVEHIST was created for a reason, and my script demonstrated that
reason. If it was true that SAVEHIST should *always* be the same and
HISTSIZE, then SAVEHIST wouldn't exist, as the code simply could use
HISTSIZE.

This is not something new users should be burdened with, they don't
need to know what SAVEHIST means, just that it should be set to
$HISTSIZE.

-- 
Felipe Contreras