How to increase the size of the .ed_history file

Question

I am running GNU ed 1.18 on Fedora Linux 36. I run ed with rlwrap also installed which gives me access to my command history. My .ed_history file appears to have a size limit of 300 lines. I would like to increase that limit, perhaps to unlimited if possible.

Answer 1

This is a question about rlwrap ("readline wrapper") more than about ed.

The rlwrap tool has a default history size of 300 entries. You may increase this by using the tool's -s (--histsize) option:

rlwrap -s 1000 ed

There is no way to set an "unlimited" history size. Instead, pick a large enough number as the argument to -s.

You may also set the history size that rlwrap will use with ed by adding a section like the following to your ~/.inputrc file:

$if ed
        set history-size 1000
$endif