comint-input-ring-size

[Stephen Eglen]

Robin Hankin writes:
 > Hello everybody.
 > 
 > I've just been having problems with comint-input-ring-size.   The 
 > default for this is 32, which
 > I find far too small.  Two questions
 > 
 > (1) could we change ess to have a default of 1024?
 > 
 > (2) This variable cannot be set with M-x set-variable (which reports 
 > that the variable does not exist).
 > I have just found out (thanks Stephen!) that the correct way to do 
 > this is to  put  (setq comint-input-ring-size 1024) in my .emacs 
 > file.  This may be obvious to lisp programmers, but
 > I needed to ask for help.  Could we document this somewhere please?

Just in case others have this problem:

M-x describe-variable RET comint-input-ring-size RET will show the
variable's current value.  The documentation string is missing a * at
the beginning of the first line, so it cannot be set with M-x
set-variable.  (Compare with the variable comint-buffer-maximum-size
which does have the magic star.)  This is an Emacs convention, not
specific to ESS.  Any suggestions for what we can add to the manual to
explain this?

Stephen