[yesenadam]

Thank you!! Why on earth isn't that the default. It always seemed weird that with multiple bash windows open, the commands from most of them weren't added to the history.

[dtgriscom]

I often have three or more terminals open, doing different tasks in each; I also often have cycles of work where I'll repeat the last three commands again (three up-arrows and a return). This breaks if one terminal's commands get inserted into another terminal's history.

[flyaway123]

Comment from the author:

"Ted, the change I suggest doesn't affect the independence of your sessions as you suggest. Each shell maintains a unique history in memory so modifying the history file has no affect on running terminals. The only time the history file is read is when you start a new terminal. I recommend you try my suggestion. Really, all I am doing is eliminating the race condition that causes the bash history file to have inconsistent data.

Thanks for the feedback."

[aidenn0]

My solution is I immediately record the commands, but do not load them. That way new terminals get all the history, but old terminals keep their flow.

[noxvilleza]

My guesses are that it's on-close so you can follow the per-shell history slightly easier (rather than it being interleaved from multiple shells?), or reducing disk writes?

[bombcar]

They don’t interlace which can be nice

[usefulcat]

It is very useful just be careful when switching between shells and hitting the up arrow to get the previous command, as you may get something from another shell.

[mkl]

That will only happen if PROMPT_COMMAND also contains "history -c; history -r", right? "history -a" just saves it, but "history -c; history -r" clears memory history and reloads from disk.