On 12/14/10 9:45 AM, Gabriel Kerneis wrote:
I use MYDATE=BANKDATE for several reasons: - it looks more logical to append the bankdate (which I'll always learn *after* I write the transaction) rather than prepending it, - it is also more logical to read the dates (left to right) from the earliest to the latest,
Personally, I agree with you on both of the above points.
- the actual date is (IMO) the date the transaction actually happens (ie. the "real" date); the effective date is the date it becomes effective on my bank account.
I think this is just one interpretation of many. What's "real" depends on context and point of view, and also our words are slippery. The friday night you purchase a movie ticket (that clears on monday) seems like the "real" date, but the day your cheque is cashed (and perhaps bounces) is more "real" as far as your bank and your account balance is concerned. As you look at other kinds of real-world accounting transactions you find more ambiguities. On 12/14/10 10:56 AM, John Wiegley wrote: > The real distinction is this: Whichever date is to the left will > be reported by default. As I said. Good. > There is no inherent "meaning", however. I may just end up documenting > them as leftdate and rightdate, or something equally meaningless, to > leave the actual semantics up to the user. I think this would mean this exact confusion and discussion will recur endlessly. Wouldn't it be better for ledger to be a little opinionated here, to give some guidance ? I'd be ok with it ratifying (describing, suggesting) your original convention, which I've documented to the best of my ability at http://hledger.org/MANUAL.html#actual-effective-dates . (You planned to draw from this at some point, so be aware that I rewrote it again recently.) But I think in my ideal world the "best practice" that we'd document is what Gabriel and I, as left-to-right language speakers, intuited: the date that is chronologically first - which is also usually the one you know about first - is written first (on the left). Second, we would converge on and document some consistent terminology to use when talking about these dates. Third, based on that we might or might not choose to rename date-selecting options to something neutral, eg --effective might become --second-date. Comments ?
