thanks for that pointer, that sounded like it could solve the problem, but i didn't...
i think the lithist option means a multiline command like:
$ for i in *.pl
do
echo $i
done
$ <arrow up>
$ for i in *.pl ; do echo $i; done
$ shopt -s lithist
$ <arrow up>
$ for i in *.pl
do
echo $i
done
the problem appears if command arguments itself have newlines, an easy example is
$ echo "
word
"
so it would work if one calls perl with multiple -e args:
$ perl -wle'print 1;' \
-e 'print 2;'
but that's ugly, isn't it? =)
update: but i still think it should work because if i type in a multiline perl
command and type arrow-up immediately after that i get all my lines like
i typed them in. just storing in the history doesn't seem to work.