Filter out empty tasks

[ArneNostitz]

Hi, I am too stupid to find this: is there a way to filter out empty tasks? I have a template that has an empty task to quickly add new items. But I sometimes don’t have something to add so these files have an empty task. Going through hundreds of files would be an hassle. With dataview it’s “text != “” “ … but I can’t figure out the syntax here and can’t find anything in the forums or the docs… please help :) thanks

[claremacrae]

Hi @ArneNostitz, you're not stupid! It definitely is harder to do this in Tasks than dataview.

Here is how to do it:

To find non-empty tasks, excluding empty ones

description regex does not match /^$/ 

To find empty tasks:

description regex matches /^$/

/^$/ matches text where there is nothing between the start and the end.

It uses regular expression searches which are explained in:

https://obsidian-tasks-group.github.io/obsidian-tasks/queries/regular-expressions/

[claremacrae]

I will add this as an example in the documentation later on.

[claremacrae]

(I edited the answer above, having misread the query)

[claremacrae]

I will add this as an example in the documentation later on.

Done. #1340

It will be published to the documentation site when the next release is done.

[ArneNostitz]

awesome! thanks a lot ... i was close - but searching for "empty string regex" gave me way more complex regexes ... and I then thought thats not the right way as I did get errors ... this helps a lot! thank you

[claremacrae]

You're welcome!