Indeed not. In fact the issue would be with some history never getting recorded at all. Thank you for clarifying though, that the dir-based history tools don't

Indeed not. In fact the issue would be with some history never getting recorded at all. Thank you for clarifying though, that the dir-based history tools don't affect the existing history. The example I was trying to explain above referred to deliberately referencing a filename which may not correspond to an existing file. Like I might stat a file, to know when it was created, but if it hasn't been created yet then that's an answer too.