using both inner and outer quotes confuses expr: query. Bug ?

[simonmichael]

In chat, Pixelized reports:

hledger bs expr:"assets:cash or not assets"

leads to exactly the results i'd expect, while

hledger bs 'expr:"assets:cash or not assets"'

leads to a completely empty balance sheet. is this intended behavior?

It happens because parseQueryTerm expects to receive expr:'s argument as an unquoted string; it does not do another round of enclosing-quotes-stripping. So it interprets "assets:cash or not assets" as a single query term, equivalent to acct:"assets:cash or not assets".

This is arguably correct behaviour, on the other hand the expectation is understandable. In general, enclosing the full command line argument in quotes is the most robust, like

hledger bs "expr:assets:cash or not assets"

but we are used to this also working (eg, query docs use this style):

hledger bs expr:"assets:cash or not assets"

so it seems reasonable to think that this would also work:

hledger bs 'expr:"assets:cash or not assets"'

It sounds easy enough to have parseQueryTerm check for enclosing quotes and remove them. But will this complicate something else ? Testing needed.

[simonmichael]

Here's the three cases above with hledger-1.40, the third one failing:

~/src/hledger$ hledger bs "expr :assets:cash or not assets"
Balance Sheet 2008-02-02 

             || 2008-02-02 
=============++============
 Assets      ||            
-------------++------------
 assets:cash ||        $-1 
-------------++------------
             ||        $-1 
=============++============
 Liabilities ||            
-------------++------------
-------------++------------
             ||          0 
=============++============
 Net:        ||        $-1 
~/src/hledger$ hledger-1.40 bs expr:"assets:cash or not assets"
Balance Sheet 2008-02-02

             || 2008-02-02 
=============++============
 Assets      ||            
-------------++------------
 assets:cash ||        $-1 
-------------++------------
             ||        $-1 
=============++============
 Liabilities ||            
-------------++------------
-------------++------------
             ||          0 
=============++============
 Net:        ||        $-1 
~/src/hledger$ hledger-1.40 bs 'expr:"assets:cash or not assets"'
Balance Sheet 2008-02-02

             || 2008-02-02 
=============++============
 Assets      ||            
-------------++------------
-------------++------------
             ||          0 
=============++============
 Liabilities ||            
-------------++------------
-------------++------------
             ||          0 
=============++============
 Net:        ||          0 

Here's a custom build that strips (one pair of) enclosing quotes from expr:'s argument. This makes the third case work as OP expected:

~/src/hledger$ hledger bs 'expr:"assets:cash or not assets"'
Balance Sheet 2008-02-02

             || 2008-02-02 
=============++============
 Assets      ||            
-------------++------------
 assets:cash ||        $-1 
-------------++------------
             ||        $-1 
=============++============
 Liabilities ||            
-------------++------------
-------------++------------
             ||          0 
=============++============
 Net:        ||        $-1 

Questions:
What about all the other query prefixes, like acct:, desc:, payee: etc. ? Should they have a similar quote-stripping behaviour ?
What about multiple levels of quoting ?
What about unbalanced/mismatched quotes ?
What about the backslash style of quoting ?

Here's the test journal I'm using. I'm imagining some unusual quotes in the data,
let's say from some Beancount data that was improperly imported:

2008-01-01 "beancount txn"
    Assets:Bank:Checking           1 USD
    Income:Salary

2008-02-02 hledger txn
    expenses:food                 $1
    assets:cash

Question: How would a user match those Beancount entries ?

This works in old and new versions:

~/src/hledger$ hledger-1.40 print desc:'".*"'
2008-01-01 "beancount txn"
    Assets:Bank:Checking           1 USD
    Income:Salary

~/src/hledger$ hledger print desc:'".*"'
2008-01-01 "beancount txn"
    Assets:Bank:Checking           1 USD
    Income:Salary

What if you're doing that within an expr: query ?

Finding a spelling that does this wasn't easy, but here's one. It still works with both old and new versions (somehow):

~/src/hledger$ hledger-1.40 print "expr:'desc:\".*\"'"
2008-01-01 "beancount txn"
    Assets:Bank:Checking           1 USD
    Income:Salary

~/src/hledger$ hledger print "expr:'desc:\".*\"'"
2008-01-01 "beancount txn"
    Assets:Bank:Checking           1 USD
    Income:Salary

There are enough questions that I'm inclined not to touch this myself. I expect I'd merge a PR, if it came with tests clarifying some of these cases.