Why don't the up/down arrows work while executing a :shell command from within Gvim?

"It probably has to do with the fact that vim's terminal emulation doesn't have readline support. What is readline, you ask?

Well here is a little intro from the main website:

The GNU Readline library provides a set of functions for use by applications that allow users to edit command lines as they are typed in. Both Emacs and vi editing modes are available. The Readline library includes additional functions to maintain a list of previously-entered command lines, to recall and perhaps reedit those lines, and perform csh-like history expansion on previous commands.

Readline is what lets you use the arrow keys to alter text before you execute it on the terminal, for example. So the behavior you're describing is perfectly normal."