For a long time hledger has auto-detected the file format when it's
not known, eg when reading from a file with unusual extension (like
.dat or .txt), or from standard input (-f-), or when using the include
directive (which currently ignores file extensions).
Auto-detecting has been done by trying all readers until one succeeds.
This could guess wrong in some cases, but it was so rare that it has
been working fine.
Recently, more conveniences have been added to timedot format,
increasing its overlap with journal format, which makes this kind of
auto-detection unreliable.
Auto-detection and auto-detection failures are (probably) still pretty
rare in practice. But when it does happen it's confusing, giving
misleading errors or false successes (eg printing timedot entries
instead of a journal error).
For predictability and to minimise confusion, hledger no longer tries
to guess; when there's no file extension or reader prefix, it assumes
journal format. To specify one of the other formats, you must use a
standard file extension (.timeclock, .timedot, .csv, .ssv, .tsv), or a
reader prefix (-f csv:foo.txt, -f timedot:-).
For now, the include directive still tries to autodetect
(journal/timeclock/timedot), and this can't be overridden; it will be
fixed later.
Experimental; testing and feedback welcome.
D directives are now fully equivalent to commodity directives for
setting a commodity's display style. (Previously it was equivalent to
a posting amount, so it couldn't limit the number of decimal places.)
When both kinds of directive exist, commodity directives take precedence.
When there are multiple D directives in the journal, only the last one
affects display style.
Stop exporting journalAmounts, overJournalAmounts, traverseJournalAmounts.
Rename journalAmounts helper to journalStyleInfluencingAmounts.
D directives are now a little better at influencing amount
canonicalisation, eg in the updated test case.
Previously -B implied -x; now any of the valuation flags do.
This avoids a bug where print -V of a transaction with an implicit
commodity conversion would convert only some of its postings to value.
Also, more valuation tests.
-V (and -X) now respects a report end date set with -e/-p/date: when
choosing the valuation date, similar to hledger 1.14 and Ledger.
This means that -V/-X aren't exactly like either --value=end or
--value=now. The "Effect of --value on reports" doc has been extended
accordingly, and much of it has been reworded and made more accurate.
Transaction prices were being collapsed/misreported after close/open;
this is fixed. Now each separately-priced amount gets its own posting,
and only the last of these (for each commodity) gets a balance
assertion. Also the equity posting's amount is now always shown
explicitly, which in multicommodity situations means that multiple
equity postings are shown. The upshot is that a balance -B report
will be unchanged after closing & opening transactions.
To reduce confusion, multiperiod balance reports using -H/--historical
or --cumulative, which show end balances, no longer show a Totals
column since summing end balances generally doesn't make sense.
Also the underlying MultiBalanceReport now returns zero for those
totals when in cumulative or historical mode.
This feature turns out to be quite involved, as valuation interacts
with the many report variations. Various bugs/specs have been
fixed/clarified relating to register's running total, balance totals
etc. Eg register's total should now be the sum of the posting amount
values, not the values of the original sums. Current level of support
has been documented.
When valuing at transaction date, we once again do early valuation of
all posting amounts, to get more correct results. variants. This means
--value-at=t can be slower than other valuation modes when there are
many transactions and many prices. This could be revisited for
optimisation when things are more settled.
Instead of converting all journal amounts to value early on, we now
convert just the report amounts to value, before rendering.
This was basically how it originally worked (for the balance command),
but now it's built in to the four basic reports used by print,
register, balance and their variants - Entries, Postings, Balance,
MultiBalance - each of which now has its own xxValue helper.
This should mostly fix -V's performance when there are many
transactions and prices (the price lookups could still be optimised),
and allow more flexibility for report-specific value calculations.
+------------------------------------------++-----------------+-------------------+--------------------------+
| || hledger.999.pre | hledger.999.1sort | hledger.999.after-report |
+==========================================++=================+===================+==========================+
| -f examples/1000x1000x10.journal bal -V || 1.08 | 0.96 | 0.76 |
| -f examples/2000x1000x10.journal bal -V || 1.65 | 1.05 | 0.73 |
| -f examples/3000x1000x10.journal bal -V || 2.43 | 1.58 | 0.84 |
| -f examples/4000x1000x10.journal bal -V || 4.39 | 1.96 | 0.93 |
| -f examples/5000x1000x10.journal bal -V || 7.75 | 2.99 | 1.07 |
| -f examples/6000x1000x10.journal bal -V || 11.21 | 3.72 | 1.16 |
| -f examples/7000x1000x10.journal bal -V || 16.91 | 4.72 | 1.19 |
| -f examples/8000x1000x10.journal bal -V || 27.10 | 9.83 | 1.40 |
| -f examples/9000x1000x10.journal bal -V || 39.73 | 15.00 | 1.51 |
| -f examples/10000x1000x10.journal bal -V || 50.72 | 25.61 | 2.15 |
+------------------------------------------++-----------------+-------------------+--------------------------+
There's one new limitation, not yet resolved: -V once again can pick a
valuation date in the future, if no report end date is specified and
the journal has future-dated transactions. We prefer to avoid that,
but reports currently are pure and don't have access to today's date.
