Tasks with start date not filtered out by "no happens date"?

[wowo101]

Hi,

I'm trying to filter out tasks that have a start date within the current week from my backlog like this:

(happens after this week) OR (no happens date)

But although the tasks are shown in my "Today" or "This week" lists (which use specific happens filters), they still appear in the backlog (and thus twice overall):

Is this a bug or am I doing something wrong here?

Cheers,
Wolfgang

[claremacrae]

Hi Wolfgang @wowo101

Is this a bug or am I doing something wrong here?

It's impossible to say.

I can't tell the dates on any of your tasks. There is no text showing your actual tasks query block.

And even if the info were there, I would have to re-type it myself. Plus, often the problem is a subtle typo which would not show up if i re-typed it.

Please could you:

1. Make sure you have updated to the latest tasks, then re-started Obsidian.
2. Give me a few tasks that I can copy and paste in to Obsidian
3. Give me a Tasks query block that I can copy
4. Tell me which of the tasks you expect to be found by your query, and which not.

Thanks - looking forward to hearing from you.

[wowo101]

Hi Clare,

Thanks for getting back to me! Here's what you requested:

1. I'm using the latest versions of Obsidian and Tasks, and I tried a few restarts.

2. Example tasks:

• Prepare visual proposal for website etc. and send it to XYZ 🛫 2022-10-03 ⏫
• Create visualisation of structure and strategy 🛫 2022-10-03

NB: I'm not using a global filter.

3. Task query blocks:

⏰ Today

	not done
	happens before tomorrow
	short mode

📅 This week

	not done
	(happens from tomorrow) AND (happens this week)
	short mode

📋 Backlog

	not done
	(happens after this week) OR (no happens date)
	short mode

I expect the example tasks to show up in the "Today" block, but not in the backlog. In my Obsidian, it shows up in both.

I hope this makes it clearer!

Best,
Wolfgang

[claremacrae]

OK, thank you. And when you say ‘after this week’, what day are you expecting the cut-off to be?

It’s not obvious to me what the behaviour should be, and I would like to understand what you are aiming for.

What in your mind is the algorithm to convert “after this week” in to an actual “happens after 2022-xx-yy?

[claremacrae]

Hi @wowo101

I think that I may understand, from the title of your question, what may be the cause of the confusion.

The library used by Tasks to interpret text like after this week - chrono - does not always do what users might expect it to do, and so it can lead to some confusing results.

If you look at the following issue, you will see some related discussion, and also that the behaviour in this area may change when we update chrono.

#1176
Can days of week in a query remain constant during the week?

happens after this week

You seem to be interpreting (happens after this week) OR (no happens date) as meaning that no happens date passed. However, it is much more likely that happens after this week passed.

See the dates docs for how you can experiment with relative dates in your queries are interpreted.

For example, I did the following, to find out that today this week is interpreted as 2022-10-02 in queries.

1. Click in a task
2. Open the 'Create or edit task' modal
3. Turn off 'Only future dates' (step 1 on image)
4. Paste in the text this week (step 2)
5. Review the displayed interpretation

happens this week

Knowing that this week is currently interpreted as 2022-10-02 means that happens this week is interpreted as happens 2022-10-02 - that is, only on one day.

How to test your filters

I recommend writing a series of tasks something like the following - but covering perhaps from 10 days ago to 10 days time, and confirming that your filters really do give the results you expect.

- [ ] minus 2 📅 2022-10-03
- [ ] minus 1 📅 2022-10-04
- [ ] today 📅 2022-10-05
- [ ] plus 1 📅 2022-10-06

Other useful links:

• https://obsidian-tasks-group.github.io/obsidian-tasks/how-to/find-tasks-for-coming-7-days/
• How to query for month overview? #1185
  • This has some dataview code that generates a tasks block with much finer grained control of the dates in the query.

I'm sorry this is so confusing, but it's best I've got right now.

I think that Tasks has more often been used by people who are use templates to create daily notes, and so able to use fixed dates.

[wowo101]

Thanks Clare, this is extremely helpful! 🙌🏻

Understanding that a week is interpreted as the week's start date (I guess chrono doesn't use periods of time, only dates?) prompted me to amend my filters as follows:

This week: (happens from tomorrow) AND (happens before next week)

Backlog: (happens from next week) OR (no happens date)

I.e. I'm now explicitly using the dates represented by week to achieve what I meant to achieve using periods of time.

Your examples and explanation helped me test my new solution thoroughly and understand better how Tasks is working internally, so a win all around! 🙏🏻

[claremacrae]

I'm glad it helped.
I would encourage you to read the docs, though.

https://obsidian-tasks-group.github.io/obsidian-tasks/queries/filters/#happens
happens (before|after|on) <date>

There is no from in there, so the from will be ignored, and it will likely exactly match the date.

Did you try the thing out that I suggested, of using a range of dates and testing your expectations or assumptions about how it will work?

[wowo101]

That's embarassing! 😂

Of course I had stopped testing the full range of dates when I added these, so it only "worked" for the one I kept testing. 😬

Less elegant but finally working correctly:

This week: (happens after today) AND (happens before next week)

Backlog: ((happens after this week) AND NOT (happens before next week)) OR (no happens date)

[claremacrae]

Thank you for sharing that. I've added a label to indication that this hard-won knowledge may be worth to the documentation.