RE: should search ring contain duplicates?

[Drew Adams]

        See the thread at
        http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2004-09/msg00038.html
    
        Thx. The only argument I see in that thread for ever 
        allowing duplicates is the point RMS raised about a
        command history.
    
    Could you show me what I said, back then, about a command history?  I
    don't remember it, and it is not easy for me to look through a thread.

Clicking the link shows this:

 There was one question left, if removing duplicates from history
 should be turned on by default. 
 IMHO duplicates should be removed from history by default, most users
 are more interested in the unique data present in history. If an exact
 sequence of events is desired M-x list-command-history can do that.

 [I reformated the last message from Stephan in that thread  to make it
 clear who said what]:

 Dan> How about the default? Should this be turned on by default? 
 Juri>     It seems reasonable to turn it on by default.

 RMS> Absolutely not!  It would be a great surprise, and it would mean
 RMS> you could not look around at your error messages without changing
 RMS> other buffers on the screen.

 Stephan> Huh?  I don't understand why removing duplicates from the history
 Stephan> would ever have any such effect.
 Stephan> Could you explain what use case you're thinking of ?