[jb_daefo]

I have HISTSIZE 32000

history | grep tpad
history -2000| grep tpad

show results as usual (2)

history -3000 |grep tpad
.....( pages and pages of irrelevant 'ls -lac' output...
.....included )
.....In fact 2913 is normal
.....2914 is pages and pages of the irrelevant output...

shows directory listings (as if ls -lac was run and
shown by the cat command, without column order
even... ), obscuring the results given by the
first two commands.

This problem just started a few months ago.
No web search results seen...