History file for dialog C shell (t)csh

[Warren Block]

On Sun, 20 Apr 2014, Trond Endrestøl wrote:

> On Sun, 20 Apr 2014 19:40+0200, Polytropon wrote:
>
>> I have a question regarding shell history when running several
>> shell instances. The C shell (still) is my primary interactive
>> shell. It stores commands in ~/.history. But as I'm using more
>> than one shell instance (in fact, 5+ shells is the norm here,
>> called inside X terminals), I find that the history file only
>> contains commands from one of those shells, even though the history
>> of each indivual shell can recall previous commands. At the end,
>> only one shell's commands are stored in the history file, so
>> after a reboot for example, all shells have _that_ specific
>> history.
>>
>> My question sounds stupid, even to me: Is there a way to have
>> individual shell history files for each shell instance? I don't
>> even have an idea of how to make the association shell<->history
>> for later re-identification... it already sounds confusing...
>>
>> Or on the other hand, is it possible to have all shells send
>> their history to a common history file?
>>
>> Or should I simply switch over to a different shell? ;-)
>
> Could this be what you need?
>
> set history = 200000
> set savehist = (200000 merge)

The merged history is shared by all new shells.  It would not be hard to 
load or save particular history files based on a variable, then set the 
terminal title to a name.  That name would have to be preset somehow, 
though... like different icons or key commands to start the different 
sessions.

> It saves the 200,000 last commands, and merges the new commands with
> the previously saved ones.

Yes, along with adding 'history -S' to .logout.

I'm starting to wonder about adding some history commands to be executed 
as part of the prompt, so that each session shares the history 
immediately rather than only adding to it on logout.  Maybe
'history -S; history -L'?  (Untested.)