Task Home Page

Here are the other commands, in some detail.

With no arguments, this command will generate a help message that lists all these commands.

This report generates a list of all the different projects that you are using along with a count of the pending tasks for each project. For example:

% task projects

Project   Tasks
Errands       1
Birthdays     3
Car           2

This report lists all the projects and a summary of their task status.

% task summary

Project  Remaining Avg age Complete 0%                        100%
Errands          1  3 days      50% XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Birthdays        3  7 mths       0%
Car              2   2 wks      25% XXXXXXXXX

This shows the project, the remaining tasks, the average age of each task, the percentage completed (remaining vs total) and a bar indicating that percentage.

There are two ways of getting rid of tasks - mark them as done, or delete them.

This is how a task is marked as done.

The list report will show the active status, and age of the task in addition to the columns that "task ls" shows. It is just a more detailed list.

The long report will show the entry date and start date of a task, in addition to the columns that the "task list" shows.

This marks a task as started (and therefore active), which is shown in the "list" report:

% task list

ID Project Pri Due Active Age     Description
12 Errand  L                      Remember to deposit check
...

% task start 12
% task list

ID Project Pri Due Active Age     Description
12 Errand  L       *      3 days  Remember to deposit check
...

Shows all active tasks, that is, the tasks for which the "task start ..." command was run, as shown above.

Simply lists all the task that have a due date that is past, in "list" format.

This report shows you an overview of how many tasks were added, completed and deleted, by month. It looks like this:

% task history

Year Month     Added Completed Deleted Net
2008 March        21        16       0   5
     April        13        11       1   1
     May           8        14       3  -9

This shows that for the three months that task has been used, March and April saw the total number of tasks increase, but in May the number decreased as more task were completed than added.

This report shows a calendar of the current month, with any task due or overdue dates marked on it. Color is used to mark these dates.

% task calendar

May 2008

Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
             1  2  3
 4  5  6  7  8  9 10
11 12 13 14 15 16 17
18 19 20 21 22 23 24
25 26 27 28 29 30 31

This report shows you the tasks you should probable work on next. Task will scan all the tasks and will pick two task from each project to report. Those two tasks will be chosen in order of overdue, due soon, High, Medium or Low priority. Essentially task chooses the two most important task for each project and displays them ordered in the usual way.

If you wish to show a different number of tasks per project, modify the entry in .taskrc:

next=2

To be your preferred number.

When a task id is specified, everything applies to just that task. Suppose we needed to correct a task:

% task ls

ID Project Pri Description
12 Errand  L   Remember to deposit chekc
...

% task 12 Remember to deposit bonus check
% task ls

ID Project Pri Description
12 Errand  L   Remember to deposit bonus check
...

Lists the oldest tasks. Shows 10 tasks by default, but can be set via the "oldest" configuration variable.

Lists the newest tasks. Shows 10 tasks by default, but can be set via the "newest" configuration variable.

If a task has been entered with a typo, it can be easily corrected by this command. For example:

% task ls

ID Project Pri Description
12 Errand  L   Remember to deposit chekc
...

% task 12 /chekc/check/
% task ls

ID Project Pri Description
12 Errand  L   Remember to deposit check
...

This command makes single corrections to a task description.

This command will generate a list of all the tags that are currently in use by task.

This command gives detailed information about a single task. It will tell you when the task was entered, when started, its status, tags, and more.

This command generates a list of statistics about your task usage, such as the average time it takes to complete a task, how often new tasks are added, and more.

This generates a list of all tasks that have been completed, sorted by their completion date.

This instructs task to write out a CSV format dump of all tasks, both pending and completed, to the file specified. This is how you might view tasks in a spreadsheet.

This command displays all the colors that task supports.

If logging has been enabled by the "command.logging=on" directive in the .taskrc file, then task will record every command that is run. When this command is run, task will display a count of how many times each command was used.

This command is for the purpose of seeing whether command are actually used.

This can be used to show the version number of task, and to display all the current configuration settings, as read from the .taskrc file.

Certain characters are interpreted by the shell. For example, the "&". If you wish to include the & in a task description, you need to escape it, so the shell doesn't interpret it. For example:

% task add Buy bread & milk

This command is an error because of the &. The shell will consider this to be two commands:

% task add Buy bread &
% milk

The shell treats the & character as an indicator that the command is complete and should be run in the background. Then the shell considers "milk" to be a command all by itself. Which it is not. One way to get around this is to individually escape the & character:

% task add Buy bread \& milk

Another is to quote the entire description, with either ' or " characters:

% task add "Buy bread & milk"

Task itself interprets the commands, and it too can make mistakes. For example, any colon : character will be interpreted by task as a delimiter between an attribute name and its value. Currently there is no workaround for this.

Not strictly a command, the setting of the fg and bg (foreground and background) attributes determines the colors used to represent the task. Valid foreground colors are:

         bold          underline          bold_underline
black    bold_black    underline_black    bold_underline_black
red      bold_red      underline_red      bold_underline_red
green    bold_green    underline_green    bold_underline_green
yellow   bold_yellow   underline_yellow   bold_underline_yellow
blue     bold_blue     underline_blue     bold_underline_blue
magenta  bold_magenta  underline_magenta  bold_underline_magenta
cyan     bold_cyan     underline_cyan     bold_underline_cyan
white    bold_white    underline_white    bold_underline_white

Note that these are not just colors, but combinations of colors and attributes. Valid background colors are:

on_black    on_bright_black
on_red      on_bright_red
on_green    on_bright_green
on_yellow   on_bright_yellow
on_blue     on_bright_blue
on_magenta  on_bright_magenta
on_cyan     on_bright_cyan
on_white    on_bright_white

Note also that this capability does depend on whether your terminal program can display these colors.

Task recognizes several entries in the .taskrc file for configuration purposes. Valid entries are of the form:

name=value

Valid examples are:

m/d/Y

6/7/2008

Task supports color in several places. In cases where you may specify a color, a foreground, a background, or a combination foreground and background color may be used. The following are valid foreground colors:

         bold          underline          bold_underline
black    bold_black    underline_black    bold_underline_black
red      bold_red      underline_red      bold_underline_red
green    bold_green    underline_green    bold_underline_green
yellow   bold_yellow   underline_yellow   bold_underline_yellow
blue     bold_blue     underline_blue     bold_underline_blue
magenta  bold_magenta  underline_magenta  bold_underline_magenta
cyan     bold_cyan     underline_cyan     bold_underline_cyan
white    bold_white    underline_white    bold_underline_white

and the following are valid background colors:

on_black    on_bright_black
on_red      on_bright_red
on_green    on_bright_green
on_yellow   on_bright_yellow
on_blue     on_bright_blue
on_magenta  on_bright_magenta
on_cyan     on_bright_cyan
on_white    on_bright_white