Your ironic stance won't help your case.
Especially when what you describe is not true, 0 in 4.2 means 0.
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FWIW, in the 4.3 README, under differences from 4.2:
n. Setting HISTSIZE to a value less than zero causes the history list to be
unlimited (setting it 0 zero disables the history list).
o. Setting HISTFILESIZE to a value less than zero causes the history file size
to be unlimited (setting it to 0 causes the history file to be truncated
to zero size).
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and that's why user's should be wary of reading release notes! ;-)
