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Full Discussion: HISTSIZE and HISTFILESIZE
Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers HISTSIZE and HISTFILESIZE Post 302691577 by King Clarity on Saturday 25th of August 2012 01:33:01 AM
Old 08-25-2012
Read the question properly

Dude, you didn't answer the actual question. Try reading it again.

The question was what is the difference between HISTSIZE and HISTFILESIZE.

The OP is right, the bash man page is somewhat confusing, it states:
Code:
HISTFILESIZE
      The maximum number of lines contained in the history file.   When  this  variable  is  assigned  a
      value,  the history file is truncated, if necessary, by removing the oldest entries, to contain no
      more than that number of lines.  The default value is 500.  The history file is also truncated  to
      this size after writing it when an interactive shell exits.
...
HISTSIZE
      The  number of commands to remember in the command history (see HISTORY below).  The default value
      is 500.

which sound kinda similar.

pandeesh - the answer is you can use either if you want to increase the number of items in your history; however HISTFILESIZE refers specifically to the actual history file itself (e.g. ~/.bash_history) which is written when the shell exits. HISTSIZE refers specifically to history as saved in memory.
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history(n)						       Tcl Built-In Commands							history(n)

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

NAME
history - Manipulate the history list SYNOPSIS
history ?option? ?arg arg ...? _________________________________________________________________ DESCRIPTION
The history command performs one of several operations related to recently-executed commands recorded in a history list. Each of these recorded commands is referred to as an ``event''. When specifying an event to the history command, the following forms may be used: [1] A number: if positive, it refers to the event with that number (all events are numbered starting at 1). If the number is negative, it selects an event relative to the current event (-1 refers to the previous event, -2 to the one before that, and so on). Event 0 refers to the current event. [2] A string: selects the most recent event that matches the string. An event is considered to match the string either if the string is the same as the first characters of the event, or if the string matches the event in the sense of the string match command. The history command can take any of the following forms: history Same as history info, described below. history add command ?exec? Adds the command argument to the history list as a new event. If exec is specified (or abbreviated) then the command is also exe- cuted and its result is returned. If exec isn't specified then an empty string is returned as result. history change newValue ?event? Replaces the value recorded for an event with newValue. Event specifies the event to replace, and defaults to the current event (not event -1). This command is intended for use in commands that implement new forms of history substitution and wish to replace the current event (which invokes the substitution) with the command created through substitution. The return value is an empty string. history clear Erase the history list. The current keep limit is retained. The history event numbers are reset. history event ?event? Returns the value of the event given by event. Event defaults to -1. history info ?count? Returns a formatted string (intended for humans to read) giving the event number and contents for each of the events in the history list except the current event. If count is specified then only the most recent count events are returned. history keep ?count? This command may be used to change the size of the history list to count events. Initially, 20 events are retained in the history list. If count is not specified, the current keep limit is returned. history nextid Returns the number of the next event to be recorded in the history list. It is useful for things like printing the event number in command-line prompts. history redo ?event? Re-executes the command indicated by event and return its result. Event defaults to -1. This command results in history revision: see below for details. HISTORY REVISION
Pre-8.0 Tcl had a complex history revision mechanism. The current mechanism is more limited, and the old history operations substitute and words have been removed. (As a consolation, the clear operation was added.) The history option redo results in much simpler ``history revision''. When this option is invoked then the most recent event is modified to eliminate the history command and replace it with the result of the history command. If you want to redo an event without modifying history, then use the event operation to retrieve some event, and the add operation to add it to history and execute it. KEYWORDS
event, history, record Tcl history(n)
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