Point of tags with full-text search?

[xeruf]

Why would I bother with tags if I can just filter with -contains?

[micahellison]

I generally don't use tags for that reason. I'm more of a "search, don't sort" person when it comes to recording information with jrnl.

However, tags can be used really fluently with jrnl. For instance, jrnl @todo is a lot less typing than jrnl -contains todo.

Also, sometimes someone might use a tag to delineate what an entry is about. I might search for chili recipes in my cooking journal with jrnl cooking -contains chili and yet it may also include a comment in an entry about a stew where I used tomato paste "just like in my chili", which I wouldn't want in my search results. If I were a bit more diligent and used a @chili tag, I wouldn't run into that problem.

Not that I'm going to do that. I don't mind a little noise in my search results if it means less work entering data. But that's just my personal preference.

[xeruf]

For instance, jrnl @todo is a lot less typing than jrnl -contains todo

This is the argument I expected - which can easily be fixed by an alias or by making the former a shorthand for the latter.

But overall I fully agree with that sentiment - I even wrote a script to automatically tag specific words before I realized this is not needed ^^

[micahellison]

This is the argument I expected - which can easily be fixed by an alias or by making the former a shorthand for the latter.

This is true for lots of situations but not all, because -contains has no concept of individual words, unlike tag search. For instance, jrnl @tag will include entries with @tag but not necessarily @tag2, whereas jrnl -contains tag will include both tag and tag2.