(Archived) tag:@* not working? what's wrong with non-existent items?

[raindog 16]

I've been playing with Ruud Hein's GTD article: http://ruudhein.com/evernote-gtd.

His system is based on using @tags - e.g., "@waiting for", "@someday", etc., to keep your GTD "tag namespace" separate from other tags.

Two questions:

(1) One of the saved searches is:

todo:false tag:@* -tag:sd -tag:@project -tag:@wf

However, the wildcard tag...

 tag:@*

...just doesn't seem to love me. Every attempt to use this in a saved search results in "Saved search query contains non-existent items". I do have some tags setup that should match that wildcard. ??? If I take that part out the rest of the query is fine. Putting it as

tag:"@*"

doesn't seem to make a difference.

(2) What is the problem with non-existent items? Who cares? Maybe I'll have some in the future. Evernote should let me enter search queries even if they don't currently match any notes.

[engberg 89]

Which client are you using? It may be a client bug.

In general, you may be better off using the underscore character (_) as your magic marker for special tags instead of the @ symbol, since the underscore is considered a "word character" like letters and numbers.

[raindog 16]

Which client are you using? It may be a client bug.

In general, you may be better off using the underscore character (_) as your magic marker for special tags instead of the @ symbol, since the underscore is considered a "word character" like letters and numbers.

Windows version 3.5.4.2343 (85292). Ruud's article is from September 2009, so perhaps something changed since then.

[jefito 5,598]

I see this working in 3.5.5.2491 (88745) : it found my '@' prefixed tags no problem.

I might have to change the '@'s to '_', but my brain balks at that, since '_' prefixed identifiers are reserved in C++ for the implementation (i.e. verboten for developers).

~Jeff

[raindog 16]

I see this working in 3.5.5.2491 (88745) : it found my '@' prefixed tags no problem.

All of my @-prefixed tags are fine except the wildcard @*.

[jefito 5,598]

I should have mentioned that 'tag:@*' found all of my '@'-prefixed tagged notes.

~Jeff

[bruce_at_jacobs 0]

I just set this system up my self and I am really liking it so far. As for the "tag=@*" Jon b. on Ruuds site found that if you change it to "Tag=@*" it seams to work again.