Farkas, Illes wrote:
(1) Is the following statement correct? The dump file "pages-meta-history" lists all versions (revisions) of each page and the dump file "pages-meta-current-yyyymmdd" contains for each page only one of these versions (revisions): the last version of the page before the day yyyymmdd
Yes.
(2) Is the following statement correct? : The dump file "pages-meta-history-yyyymmdd" contains the histories of ___exactly___ those (not more and not fewer) pages that exist on the selected day (yyyymmdd).
Almost yes. The dump file tagged yyyymmdd, was made at the yyyymmdd dump batch. Only pages existing when the dump was made are included there. But dumps can take many days (for big wikis), and although xml files are consistent by themselves, they aren't necessarily consistent for that date (and the several yyyymmdd files to download don't necessary match the same point of time). So treat the yyyymmdd date as an approximated time, not hard.
OTOH this is probably too much information for your needs. iawiki is done in half an hour, so pages will be those that existed on that day (as the dump begins and ends at yyyymmdd).