"due on or before"?

[bkriddle]

Would it be difficult to add an "on or" element to queries (e.g., "due on or before tomorrow"? Obviously you can just add another day to the "before" query, but it's a bit more natural if I want to find tasks due in the next two days to query "due on or before the day after tomorrow" as opposed to "due before two days after tomorrow". Definitely not a high priority thing even if it's easy, as the current set-up works fine as is, I just have to put some thought into it and test things to make sure I didn't screw it up.

[schemar]

Hey there, good idea. I have the same feeling when I am using queries. As you said, it is not high priority as there is an existing workaround. So it will take a while until I will get to do this.

[Cito]

I agree it would be nice to have filter operators on or before and on or after for dates in addition to the existing ones on, before and after.

on or before sunday would simply be syntactic sugar for (on sunday) OR (before sunday) which is already possible, so not really something that is missing, but just a nice to have feature.

[Cito]

See also #1178 for using between as syntactic sugar.

[ilandikov]

@claremacrae asking you as you are the maintainer now. Would you be ok to have since and until keywords that would include the date they are used with?

For absolute & relative dates and date ranges respectively:

(starts on 2023-07-31) OR (starts after 2023-07-31) = starts since 2023-07-31
(due next mon) OR (due after next mon) = due since next mon
(starts next month) OR (starts after this month) = starts since this month

(scheduled on 2023-07-31) OR (scheduled before 2023-07-31) = scheduled until 2023-07-31
due before in two weeks= due until this sun
(scheduled this week) OR (scheduled before this week) = scheduled until this week

So that finally the keywords would work in this way:
after - after the date or date range end, non inclusive (unchanged)
since - after the date or date range start, inclusive (new)

before - before the date or date range start, non inclusive (unchanged)
until - before the date or date range end, inclusive (new)

between - after the start and before the end, inclusive (unchanged)

[claremacrae]

Thanks for the suggestions...

I do not think since is the right word. I think to many people it means the same as after.

And I am afraid I also do not think it is obvious that until is different from before.

Personally. my preference for enabling on or before and similar is to implement the followoing:

due < YYYY-MM-DD
due <= YYYY-MM-DD
due = YYYY-MM-DD [*]
due > YYYY-MM-DD
due >= YYYY-MM-DD

[*] And maybe also some or all of:

due == YYYY-MM-DD
due === YYYY-MM-DD

[ilandikov]

Ok, so if I follow your suggestion,

due < YYYY-MM-DD (same as "before" as implemented now)
due <= YYYY-MM-DD (same as "since" as I proposed)

due > YYYY-MM-DD (same as "after" as implemented now)
due >= YYYY-MM-DD (same as "until" as I proposed)

Is that your proposal? I find it unnatural to write <>= signs with dates but it is better than (starts on 2023-07-31) OR (starts after 2023-07-31).

Another suggestion I came up with right now is add inclusive keyword, for instance starts after 2023-07-31 inclusive. Would this be ok?

[claremacrae]

Yes, that's the suggestive.

starts after 2023-07-31 inclusive

Interesting idea...

I think that inclusive makes sense in ranges A to B inclusive.
But after means after, and adding inclusive to it will be confusing - inclusive of what?

TBH, by far the easiest thing to right now is to add support for:

• on or before
• on or after

[ilandikov]

ok, cool, I will try implement that if fine by you =)

Do we agree that on or before/after shall work for absolute dates, relative dates and date ranges?

[claremacrae]

ok, cool, I will try implement that if fine by you =)

Awesome, yes please!

Do we agree that on or before/after shall work for absolute dates, relative dates and date ranges?

Let's answer that by looking at the docs
DDD - Documentation-Driven-Development!

So currently we have this in the quick reference:

due (before, after, on) <date>
due (before, after, in) ...
... YYYY-MM-DD YYYY-MM-DD
... (last, this, next) (week, month, quarter, year)
... (YYYY-Www,YYYY-mm, YYYY-Qq, YYYY)
has due date
no due date
due date is invalid

This seems like a logical extension:

due (on, before, after, on or before, on or after) <date>
due (in, before, after, in or before, in or after) ...
... YYYY-MM-DD YYYY-MM-DD
... (last, this, next) (week, month, quarter, year)
... (YYYY-Www,YYYY-mm, YYYY-Qq, YYYY)
has due date
no due date
due date is invalid

So the diff is this:

- due (before, after, on) <date>
+ due (on, before, after, on or before, on or after) <date>

and this:

- due (before, after, in) ...
+ due (in, before, after, in or before, in or after) ...

If on or and in or happen to work for both <date> and <range> as a side-effect of the implementation, that's fine - but from a user perspective, the above feels a logical extension of the current docs to me.

[ilandikov]

Guess this now can be closed after #2186 =)

[claremacrae]

Good point, after the next release I'll close this.

[claremacrae]

Just released in Tasks 4.6.0.

• docs for single dates
• docs for date ranges