Re: crashes using history

[Petr M. <mi...@ph...>]

> The problem actually appears to be something that was sitting in the code for 
> quite a while.
> SourceForge bugs-report isn't working right now.  I've attached the patch

I've committed it to cvs.


> OK, now some comments.
>
> 1)  By shuffling around the command line entries when placing them in the 
> history buffer, the history becomes inaccurate in a significant sense.  A 
> user, especially a new one, will fret "Now what did I type to get that to 
> work?".  He or she will look back at the history and see something that in no 
> way reflects what was typed if there are repeat commands.

It reflects all commands he has entered. By means of them, the last plot can 
be easily reproduced.

The current behaviour saves his nerves using "up arrow" key to go always 
through last 10 replot commands, for example.


> the list, in order to do this little shuffling thing, one has to search back 
> through the history time and time again.  If the history buffer gets very 
> long with one unique command after another, that's a lot of horsepower going 
> to maintaining the buffer on a consistent basis.

There is a limit of 1000 commands stored in the history if I remember 
correctly, so there will be max 1000 times strcmp(). It will take much less 
time then drawing any graph or writing a character.

> tricks.  But losing the original sequence of things means we can never get 
> things back.

Write your commands into a script file.
Keep interactive editing easy.


> Would it make sense to have an option for history:
>
> gnuplot> history # {linear | condensed}

Maybe, if some people like the "linear".

> o Was the reason for the current behavior to make sure the history buffer 
> doesn't get so big?

No, see above.

> We should also have a "depth" option.

yes, and
 	set historyfile depth 0
would avoid saving (reading also?) of the history file

> o A way to flush the history would be nice.  "history flush"?

maybe

> 2)  Minor thing:  When I type "history", should the word "history" appear as 
> the most recent entry?  It doesn't matter too much really, but somehow I feel 
> it shouldn't be displayed.

sometimes you like to have in history, sometimes not; so I want to let it 
in the history

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PM