10.3 Files of Filtered Items

Typing s in Todo Filtered Items mode saves the buffer of filtered items to a file in todo-directory. Files of items filtered by regular expression have the extension ‘.todr’, those with filtered diary items have the extension ‘.tody’ and those with filtered top priorities have the extension ‘.todt’. The extensions are added automatically the first time you save the buffer to a file.

With filtered top priority or diary items, the file is automatically named on first saving it, using as the base name either the same base name as the single todo file it was generated from, or combining the base names of the todo files used in multifile filtering commands. With items filtered by regular expression, it can be useful to save separate lists generated from the same file(s) using different regular expressions, so when saving such a list, you are prompted for a short identifying string to add to the file name.

When you invoke one of the item filtering commands without a prefix argument and a corresponding file already exists, the command visits this file (if, for the current file or chosen files, there are multiple files of items filtered by regular expression, you are prompted to choose one). To force generation of a new filtered list, invoke the command with a prefix argument (in the case of top priority items, either numeric as described above, or the raw prefix argument C-u to use the values of todo-top-priorities-overrides or todo-top-priorities).

Aside from explicitly invoking an item filtering command to display a saved list of items filtered by a given method from given todo files, there are two other ways to visit a saved file of filtered items. You can invoke a command similar to find-file:

F f

Visit a saved file of filtered items, which you choose via minibuffer completion (todo-find-filtered-items-file).

Alternatively, as with tables of categories, by customizing todo-show-first you can have the first invocation of todo-show for a given todo file display the corresponding saved file of filtered items. If there is no saved filtered items list for the file, todo-show simply defaults to visiting the file and displaying its first category, as usual.

The command F k (see File Editing) is also available in Todo Filtered Items mode. It deletes the current filtered items file.