that's exactly what my setting is for history, nice post. The only difference is that I unset HISTCONTROL, don't recall why I did that. shopt -s histappend

that's exactly what my setting is for history, nice post. The only difference is that I unset HISTCONTROL, don't recall why I did that. shopt -s histappend is the default already I believe. shopt -s cmdhist is also the default now. HISTSIZE=-1 will be unlimited, which is fine for today's computers.