--date-format

[Joost Kremers]

Hi all,

I recently started using ledger and ledger-mode and ran into an
issue that looks like a bug to me, but before I create a Github
issue, I would like to be sure.

The tl;dr of it is that ledger-mode uses the value of
`date-format` set in `~/.ledgerrc` for reading a date from the
user in `ledger-add-transaction`, which leads to an error if the
ledger-mode option `ledger-default-date-format` is not set to the
same string (and consequently the transaction dates in the ledger
don't use the this format.)

The ledger man page says that `--date-format` is for *printing*
dates, and that's indeed how ledger seems to behave, because it
used my specified date format when printing reports, even though
the transaction dates in the ledger use the default YYYY/MM/DD
format.

So I think ledger-mode should not use ledger's `--date-format` for
*reading* dates from the user and shouldn't require that
transaction dates in the ledger use this format. Unless of course
I'm overlooking something. :-)

The longer version:

In my ledger file, transaction dates are written as YYYY/MM/DD,
because that's the default format and it enables ledger-mode to
keep the transactions in chronological order. The default date
format in register reports, however, is YY-MM-DD, which I find
somewhat confusing, especially because the year is reduced to two
digits.

So I looked through the docs and found the ledger option
`--date-format`, which, as the man page states, is used to print
dates.

I added that option to `~/.ledgerrc` and all was fine, at first.
However, when I reopened the ledger file in Emacs the next day and
tried to add a new transaction with `ledger-add-transaction`, I
was greeted with a wrong-type-argument error.

Turns out that ledger-mode, when asking the user for a date,
obtains this date from `org-read-date` in Emacs internal time
format but then converts it to a string with `format-time-string`
using the ledger setting for `--date-format`. This string is then
passed to `ledger-parse-iso-date`, which fails because the date
isn't in iso format. This failure then leads to the
wrong-type-argument error in `ledger-time-less-p` (called from
`ledger-xact-find-slot`), because it cannot handle string values.

If I set `ledger-default-date-format` to the same string as
ledger's `--date-format` option and format the dates in the ledger
in the same manner, the error does not occur, but sorting doesn't
work and the new entry is simply put at the end of the ledger
file. (Though I guess that may actually not be a bug but intended
behaviour).

It's the function `ledger-format-date` that converts the
user-provided date info to a string, and it seems that it
shouldn't use ledger`s `--date-format` option to do so, at least
not when called from `ledger-add-transaction`. Instead,
`ledger-add-transaction` should use a date format that's
compatible with the transaction date format in the ledger (which I
guess is the value of `ledger-default-date-format`).

So is my assessment right? Should I open a Github issue, or is
this intended behaviour and am I overlooking something?

TIA

Joost


--
Joost Kremers
Life has its moments

[Martin Michlmayr]

* Joost Kremers <joostk...@fastmail.fm> [2020-05-26 14:33]:

> So I think ledger-mode should not use ledger's `--date-format` for *reading*

I don't use ledger-mode but based on your description it sounds like
it should use --input-date-format instead.

--
Martin Michlmayr
https://www.cyrius.com/

[John Wiegley]

>>>>> "MM" == Martin Michlmayr <t...@cyrius.com> writes:

MM> * Joost Kremers <joostk...@fastmail.fm> [2020-05-26 14:33]:

>> So I think ledger-mode should not use ledger's `--date-format` for
>> *reading*

MM> I don't use ledger-mode but based on your description it sounds like it
MM> should use --input-date-format instead.

Sounds right to me.

John

[Joost Kremers]

Thanks, I opened an issue on Github about this.