.latest.- with imports from stdin

[Terrance]

Importing via stdin (i.e. hledger import ... csv:-) creates a .latest.- file with that run's latest date, which means any other piped imports are subjected to that minimum date. This was a bit of a surprise as I'd expect the latest date not to be tracked here.

I'm using stdin as a way to reformat a series of different CSV files (e.g. sed ... $f.csv | hledger import ... csv:-), and I'd expect in general the source of a stdin import to vary between runs, so to me it would make more sense to suppress the .latest.- file by default when piping import data in, or else to have an option to prevent its creation / ignore it when present.

The import command help text talks about manipulating the latest files when needed, so I guess there's an expectation here that I'd remove them myself each time -- it just feels a little counter-intuitive.

[simonmichael]

Detection of new transactions is import's key feature, so it's natural for it to always write a .latest file (except in --dry-run mode). I agree that makes import - not very useful; I recently wrote a note about that for the docs.

It sounds like you don't need import here; wouldn't hledger print -f- do ?

[Terrance]

Yes, I think piping the output of print to a journal file would have been the better process here -- I was deleting and reimporting secondary journal files as I tested other parts of the scripting, so just printing and scanning through them in a pager would have probably been much easier.

I have now converted my existing finance spreadsheet into a set of journals I can maintain going forwards (I have been convinced PTA is the future!), but I'm probably still scratching the surface -- slowly working my way through more of the docs as I tinker 🙂

I suppose the latest file for stdin is only a problem if you have multiple pipelines that need partial importing, and at that point it might be better wrapping it in a script to create intermediate CSV files anyway.

[simonmichael]

When reading, you can specify the rules file: hledger print -f csv:- --rules=foo.rules

A similar option could be provided for specifying the latest file: hledger import csv:- --latest=.latest.foo

I'm not sure it's needed, but it would be consistent.