1.19: balance --date2 is not respecting date:

[simonmichael]

From a report by heyarne in chat:

$ cat a.j
2020-12-31
  (a)    1

$ hledger-1.23 -f a.j bal date:2021   # date: correctly excludes the 2020 posting
--------------------
                   0  
$ hledger-1.23 -f a.j bal date:2021 --date2  # but  not with --date2
                   1  a
--------------------
                   1  
$ hledger-1.19 -f a.j bal date:2021 --date2
                   1  a
--------------------
                   1
$ hledger-1.18 -f a.j bal date:2021 --date2   # it last worked in 1.18
--------------------
                   0

[rrrnld]

I'd like to add that querying for date2:2021 works as expected.

[simonmichael]

I think it's a bug still, because: --date2 should make any secondary dates (there aren't any here) be treated as the primary dates, and then date: should filter those as usual.

[Xitian9]

Oh, very interesting. It looks like it's not as simple as this working in hledger-1.18 and being broken in hledger-1.19. In fact, this was broken even in hledger-1.18 for multibalance reports.

$ hledger-1.18 -f a.j bal date:2021 --date2 -Y
Balance changes in 2020:

   || 2020 
===++======
 a ||    1 
---++------
   ||    1 

This ‘broke’ in e079c8b, where we deleted all the special balanceReport code and just replaced it with a call to multiBalanceReport.

[Xitian9]

Actually, I'm not sure there was any regression here at all. What we had in hledger-1.18 were two separate incorrect implementations, namely:

• balance reports completely ignored secondary dates
• multibalance reports seemed to take secondary dates into account, but then didn't restrict the dates appropriately

e079c8b then consolidated them into one incorrect implementation: the second.

$ cat a.j
2020-12-31=2021-01-01  Primary date in 2020, secondary date in 2021
  (a)    1

2020-12-31  Primary date in 2020, no secondary date
  (a)    2

$ hledger-1.18 -f a.j bal date:2021 --date2
--------------------
                   0

$ hledger-1.18 -f a.j bal date:2021 --date2 -Y
Balance changes in 2020-01-01..2021-12-31:

   || 2020  2021 
===++============
 a ||    2     1 
---++------------
   ||    2     1 

whereas what I would expect would be:

$ hledger-1.18 -f a.j bal date:2021 --date2
                   1  a
--------------------
                   1


$ hledger-1.18 -f a.j bal date:2021 --date2 -Y
Balance changes in 2021:

   || 2021 
===++======
 a ||    1 
---++------
   ||    1 

[Xitian9]

It looks like this bug goes at least as far back as 2012.

[simonmichael]

Thanks!