Allow filtering transactions by payee

[501st-alpha1]

I wanted to use this tool to calculate the values that would appear on my W2s, so I needed a way to filter by payee. I hacked together this solution that just splits the account name on --, so the following line in a command file:

$fw2_line01_gross_wages "Income:Wages -- Acme Inc" =

will assign to $fw2_line01_gross_wages the total of Income:Wages for any transactions involving Acme Inc.

I'm not happy with the syntax, but I couldn't think of anything better. Do you have any other ideas?

[zdw]

This looks reasonable, although I concur on the syntax. Maybe there's a better way to do this - two spaces or a tab is used to separate account from amount, so we know that's a case that can't be in the account name - if we went that way could extend it even further as need arises, such as: Income:Wages payee:'Acme Inc',othertag:'value' with account name, 2 spaces, then comma separated quoted key/value tags (github's comment system engine appears to make the two spaces into one when saving the comment, so imagine there are two there)

One note - the way you're structuring your Ledger files may make it harder in the long run to sort out sub-account totals. For example, in the structure I use, I put the name of the customer as a part of the account, so I can do this using the built in regex support:

$f1040sc_line01_gross_reciepts "Customers:.*:Payments" = 

which gets the sum of Customers:Foo:Payments and Customers:Bar:Payments, as the .* matches both accounts. If you were to change your ledger files to use say Income:Wages:Acme as the account name, selecting based on payee wouldn't be needed.

Also, when sending pull requests, it's best to squash all the changes into one commit.

[501st-alpha1]

Maybe there's a better way to do this - two spaces or a tab is used to separate account from amount, so we know that's a case that can't be in the account name

Good point, that sounds much better.

If you were to change your ledger files to use say Income:Wages:Acme as the account name, selecting based on payee wouldn't be needed.

That is another valid option, but the reason I have avoided that so far is I prefer not to duplicate information unnecessarily, and I already have the name of the company as the payee, so I'd rather not also have it as a sub-account.

Also, when sending pull requests, it's best to squash all the changes into one commit.

No problem, I wasn't sure what the policy was for this repo.

When I have time later I'll make that syntax change and squash everything down to one commit.

[501st-alpha1]

@zdw I've updated my PR.

[zdw]

This updated PR looks good. I don't have a license assigned to this repo, and I should add one before I start accepting contributions.

Would the Apache-2.0 (preferred), or the BSD 3-clause (like ledger) be OK?

[501st-alpha1]

I have no preference between those two licenses. Since this is a separate program, I don't think you are limited by what license Ledger uses, if that's what you're asking.