Happens on or before this day of the week, recurrence does not exclude the day of the week

[dictionarymouse]

I know you can use filter by function task.happens.format('dddd') === 'Sunday' to get tasks that happen on Sunday.

Is there a way to get tasks where the recurrence rule does not exclude Sunday, or is that beyond the tasks plugin?

For example, given the following list, assuming valid happens dates:

 - [ ] go to work #am 🔁 every weekday 
 - [ ] go shopping #am 🔁 every Saturday 
 - [ ] brush teeth  #am 🔁 every day 
 - [ ] read #am  🔁 every day 
 - [ ] take out trash 🔁 every Sunday and Wednesday 

Is there a simple query that would filter out tasks with recurrence rules that exclude this day of the week?
Example results:

- [ ] brush teeth  #am 🔁 every day 
- [ ] read #am  🔁 every day 
- [ ] take out trash 🔁 every Sunday and Wednesday 

[claremacrae]

The available queries for filtering recurrence rules are shown here:

https://publish.obsidian.md/tasks/Queries/Filters#Recurrence

Be sure to read about the standardisation of the rules, but the instructions of interest are:

recurrence includes ...
recurrence does not include ...

So if you can figure out the text you want to either include or exclude, then yes, it can be done...

[claremacrae]

Please report back with what you found worked for you.

[dictionarymouse]

Thank you. I had read the standardisation of the rules but the significance, especially for this, had not dawned on me. I had been forming a very convoluted filter by function statement going that sort of seemed to work but broke the more I fixed it. 😆

This seems to work:
(recurrence includes Sunday) OR (recurrence includes every day)

I am also experimenting with tags (such as tags do not include #workweek or tags include #Sunday) to allow for one-time tasks, too, but haven't quite got the logic right to work with happens on or before [date] or no date. The plugin is very powerful, but that makes it a little overwhelming to setup. Good problems 😃

BTW, in case someone is interested, in a daily notes template, with Templater installed, one can do <% moment(tp.file.title).format("dddd") %> in place of Sunday to filter the list by that day of the week. (That is what I am ultimately after... )

[claremacrae]

Thank you. I’m glad you got it working.

[dictionarymouse]

In trying to expand this to include tasks that are not recurring (recurrence includes Sunday) OR (recurrence includes every day) or (is not recurring) and ((recurrence includes Sunday) OR (recurrence includes every day)) or (is not recurring) threw errors
but NOT (is recurring) OR ((recurrence includes Sunday) OR (recurrence includes every day)) is accepted.
The order of everything seems to matter a great deal, and combining filters get unwieldy very quickly.

For anyone else wanting to display all tasks that could be done on Sunday, 2025-01-05,
using #notSunday as a shorthand tag to excluding single occurrence tasks not actionable on Sunday,
this filter seems to work:

not done
NOT (is recurring) OR ((recurrence includes Sunday) OR (recurrence includes every day))
(happens on or before 2025-01-05) OR (no happens date)
tags do not include #notSunday

[claremacrae]

In trying to expand this to include tasks that are not recurring

(recurrence includes Sunday) OR (recurrence includes every day) or (is not recurring) and ((recurrence includes Sunday) OR (recurrence includes every day)) or (is not recurring)

... threw errors

It doesn't give any errors for me... but also you should add an explain line and check the output.

You will see it doesn't do what you likely expect - and that is because AND, OR and NOT only work when they are capitalised.

but NOT (is recurring) OR ((recurrence includes Sunday) OR (recurrence includes every day)) is accepted. The order of everything seems to matter a great deal, and combining filters get unwieldy very quickly.

If I fix the case of the Boolean operators to this:

explain
(recurrence includes Sunday) OR \
(recurrence includes every day) OR \
(is not recurring) AND \
((recurrence includes Sunday) OR (recurrence includes every day)) OR\
(is not recurring)

I get this:

Explanation of this Tasks code block query:

  (recurrence includes Sunday) OR \
  (recurrence includes every day) OR \
  (is not recurring) AND \
  ((recurrence includes Sunday) OR (recurrence includes every day)) OR\
  (is not recurring)
   =>
  (recurrence includes Sunday) OR (recurrence includes every day) OR (is not recurring) AND ((recurrence includes Sunday) OR (recurrence includes every day)) OR (is not recurring) =>
    OR (At least one of):
      OR (At least one of):
        recurrence includes Sunday
        recurrence includes every day
      AND (All of):
        is not recurring
        OR (At least one of):
          recurrence includes Sunday
          recurrence includes every day
      is not recurring

[claremacrae]

@dictionarymouse I have just noticed the error, and why you are likely having trouble with your queries, which should not normally need to be so complicated.

You have not put a due, scheduled or start date on your tasks - so they are not functioning properly as recurring tasks:

 - [ ] go to work #am 🔁 every weekday 

See Recurring tasks must have at least one date .

[dictionarymouse]

Hm... I threw those lines together quickly to explain the idea. Then, without thinking about it I pasted them into the daily note.
At one point I thought that was the problem, so I checked (via edit dialog) to apply a scheduled date but the tasks had a schedule date already.
That date didn't show in the Obsidian editor even though I had I clicked 'Apply' which surprised me. I checked multiple tasks and they all had a date. I figured it the global query for short mode in effect, but I realize now that that makes no sense because it's the actual task line, not a query. What I do have: the setting for getting the scheduled date from file name enabled.

Experimenting, using the edit dialog, the date will not be added to the line unless I pick a date other than the file date. After that I can change it back to the file date, and it will show on the line. A quirk to be aware of if it is affecting the query results.

Interestingly, the above search does work if the task line is moved to another file, but of course, problems would ensue if one didn't notice and the task is copied to a date-less file.

Out of curiosity, I tested it, and one gets a sort of a never-ending repeat. Repeat multiple times a day implemented 🤣

Update: I found the dialog behavior documented here. I don't know if the absence of a directly specified date was affecting the results or not, as I deleted the testing tasks and don't want to take the time to rebuild the tests, as I seem to have something that works.