I agree with the author. My shell has a lot of history: $ history|wc -l 152298 I'm usually not typing in new commands, but rather, using ctrl+r and searc

I agree with the author. My shell has a lot of history: $ history|wc -l 152298 I'm usually not typing in new commands, but rather, using ctrl+r and searching for things I remember that I've done. For ZSH users, I would also recommend setting: $ setopt EXTENDED_HISTORY Which saves history in the format Format : [beginning time]:[elapsed seconds];[command] And $ setopt INC_APPEND_HISTORY_TIME man page says: This option is a variant of INC_APPEND_HISTORY in which, where possible, the history entry is written out to the file after the command is finished, so that the time taken by the command is recorded correctly in the history file in EXTENDED_HIS‐ TORY format. This means that the history entry will not be available immediately from other instances of the shell that are using the same history file.