Unexpected behavior using 'expr:'

[Johan van Litsenborgh]

Good day

I have been testing using 'expr:' for more complex queries and recreated a scenario that hopefully explains what I am trying to achieve and what I am getting instead.

Journal File

2023-10-09 Rental Deposit
assets:day_to_day_accounts:bank
expenses:housing:rent 400

2023-10-09 Rental Agreement Admin Fee
assets:day_to_day_accounts:bank -30
expenses:housing:rent

2023-11-26
assets:day_to_day_accounts:bank -200
expenses:housing:rent

2023-12-26
assets:day_to_day_accounts:bank -200
expenses:housing:rent

2023-12-27 Food
assets:day_to_day_accounts:bank
expenses:day_to_day 25

2024-01-09 Food
assets:day_to_day_accounts:bank
expenses:day_to_day 25

2024-01-26
assets:day_to_day_accounts:bank -200
expenses:housing:rent

2024-02-18
assets:day_to_day_accounts:bank -15
expenses:financial:tax

Then I have two queries that both work as intended that I want to combine, which doesn't work on the combine, as follows:

Query 1

The rent paid prior to this year, excluding the 'Rental Deposit'.

hledger -f finances.hledger is expr:"expenses:housing:rent AND 'not:desc:Rental Deposit' AND date:..2024-01-01"

Query 2

All expenses for the current year, excluding tax.

hledger -f finances.hledger is expr:"^expenses: AND not:expenses:financial:tax AND date:2024-01-01..tomorrow"

Combining the two expressions to achieve a single IS View

hledger -f finances.hledger is expr:"( expenses:housing:rent AND 'not:desc:Rental Deposit' AND date:..2024-01-01 ) OR ( ^expenses: AND not:expenses:financial:tax AND date:2024-01-01..tomorrow )"

But this only returns the data from the second query, disregarding the first part before the OR.

Any idea as to why I am seeing this behavior?

[Simon Michael]

Are you sure it's not working ? When I run `print` instead, the results look ok.

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[Johan van Litsenborgh]

You're right print returns all the transactions expected, but `hledger is` which I ran returns a different sum than expected.

Should I be using print?

[Johan van Litsenborgh]

I got it working by piping a print with the same expression into an 'hledger is' as follows:

hledger -f finances.hledger print expr:"( expenses:housing:rent AND 'not:desc:Rental Deposit' AND date:..2024-01-01 ) OR ( ^expenses: AND not:expenses:financial:tax AND date:2024-01-01..tomorrow )" | hledger -f- is

But I am finding it a bit weird that the expression is interpreted differently for different commands.

[Simon Michael]

I see what you mean!

One thing is that print matches transactions, unlike most other reports which match individual postings. I don't think that explains this case though. I can reproduce it more clearly with register:

$ hledger reg expr:"( expenses:housing:rent AND 'not:desc:Rental Deposit' AND date:..2024-01-01 )"

2023-10-09 Rental Agreement ..  ex:housing:rent                 30            30

2023-11-26                      ex:housing:rent                200           230

2023-12-26                      ex:housing:rent                200           430

$ hledger reg expr:"( ^expenses: AND not:expenses:financial:tax AND date:2024-01-01..tomorrow )"

2024-01-09 Food                 expenses:day_to_day             25            25

2024-01-26                      ex:housing:rent                200           225

OR-ing the two queries above, it sure seems like we should be seeing all five postings:

$ hledger reg expr:"( expenses:housing:rent AND 'not:desc:Rental Deposit' AND date:..2024-01-01 ) OR ( ^expenses: AND not:expenses:financial:tax AND date:2024-01-01..tomorrow )"

2024-01-09 Food                 expenses:day_to_day             25            25

2024-01-26                      ex:housing:rent                200           225

We should open a bug report I think.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/hledger/ca0d8c7f-c700-4cf6-8ae2-6429b8783eecn%40googlegroups.com.

[Johan van Litsenborgh]

Logged a bug on github for this issue:

https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/issues/2177