On Wed, 04 Mar 1998 22:16:16 +0000,
"Jack Holloway" <holloway@midusa.net> writes:
> my shell is sh..

So it's not bash.  You can't expect something to behave like what it's
not.

However, in this case, our sh has bash-like line editting, history,
and file name completion.  Just put the following line in your
~/.profile :

set -e

For more details, see the man pages.

Ken