Boolean Suggestion

TaskPaper
1

I was trying to use Boolean logic to search on two different tags at the same time. It didn’t work. I tried “@task AND @today”, either of which will bring up several entries. They do not seem to work together.

Suggestion: Would be nice if you could use Boolean search parameters in TaskPaper.

Thanks

David

2

try “@type=task and @today”

3

Sorry guys, I feel the complete idiot today, I was trying @task AND @today. I should have been trying @task OR @today.

Yes, Boolean works nicely in TaskPaper 3 (sheepish grin).

ADDED: I did discover that you do have to put the operator (and, or) in lower case letters of it will not work.

David

4

Moving on with Boolean, Here is a tip I just learned. If you want to exclude @done (archived) items from your search you have to make each search parameter be followed by the line “and not @done”.

This is correct: @task and not @done or @nearfuture and not @done
This is NOT correct: @task or @nearfuture and not @done

Past experience would suggest that I could have just excluded @done form the results in my (logical) summary. But here, you have to do it element by element. Still, other than saving search strings (will give that to Typinator if I start using this a lot), it’s a pretty cool idea and a hearty “well done” again to Jessie and TP3.

5

Here’s a different (maybe more flexible) way to exclude items in the archive:

@task or @nearfuture except /Archive//*

So create your normal search, and then tack except /Archive//* to the end of it. You can read more about except and other set operations here: http://guide.taskpaper.com/formatting_queries.html

Also note that you can use parentheses to group things. So if you really did want this logic:

@task and not @done or @nearfuture and not @done

You could do it shorter with:

(@task or @nearfuture) and not @done
6

Excellent. Thanks.

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