Date & Time Filters

Date filters narrow the visible lines by their parsed timestamp. They work as a post-processing step after text filters — only lines already passing text filters are checked against date filters.

Adding a Date Filter

From the filter manager (f → t): opens command mode pre-filled with date-filter .

From command mode:

:date-filter <expression>

Expression Syntax

Equals (no operator)

Omitting an operator matches the full period implied by the input’s granularity.

Input	Matches
`09:00`	the whole minute 09:00:00 – 09:00:59
`09:00:30`	the exact second 09:00:30
`Feb 21`	all of Feb 21 (00:00:00 – 23:59:59)
`Feb/21`	same — `/` is accepted as month/day separator
`02/21`	same — numeric month/day
`02-21`	same — numeric month-day
`02/21/2024`	all of Feb 21 2024
`02-21-2024`	same with dash separators
`2024-02-21`	all of Feb 21 2024
`2024-02-21 10:15`	the whole minute 10:15:00 – 10:15:59
`2024-02-21 10:15:30`	the exact second

:date-filter Feb/21
:date-filter 02/21
:date-filter 02-21
:date-filter 09:00

Range (`..`)

Both bounds are inclusive. Spaces around .. are optional.

The upper bound is expanded to the end of its granularity period: a day-level upper bound covers up to 23:59:59.999999, a minute-level upper bound covers up to :59.999999, and a second-level upper bound is exact.

# time-only (compares seconds since midnight)
:date-filter 09:00 .. 17:00       # 09:00:00 – 17:00:59
:date-filter 09:00..17:00         # same, no spaces required
:date-filter 09:00:00 .. 17:00:00 # exact seconds

# BSD month names
:date-filter Feb 21 .. Feb 22     # Feb 21 00:00:00 – Feb 22 23:59:59
:date-filter Feb/21 .. Feb/22

# numeric month/day
:date-filter 02/21 .. 02/22       # Feb 21 00:00:00 – Feb 22 23:59:59
:date-filter 02-21 .. 02-22
:date-filter 03-21..03-25         # no spaces

# ISO dates
:date-filter 2024-02-21 .. 2024-02-22

# full datetimes (second-exact bounds, no expansion)
:date-filter 2024-02-21T10:00:00 .. 2024-02-21T11:30:00
:date-filter 2024-02-21 10:00:00 .. 2024-02-21 11:30:00

Comparison operators

:date-filter > 2024-02-21T10:00:00    # after
:date-filter >= Feb 21 10:00:00       # from (inclusive)
:date-filter < 02/22                  # before Feb 22
:date-filter <= Feb 22                # up to and including

Supported operators: >, >=, <, <=

Accepted Date/Time Formats

Date bounds

Format	Example	Year
BSD month name + day	`Feb 21`, `Feb/21`	none (month/day only)
Numeric MM/DD	`02/21`	none
Numeric MM-DD	`02-21`	none
Numeric MM/DD/YYYY	`02/21/2024`	included
Numeric MM-DD-YYYY	`02-21-2024`	included
ISO date	`2024-02-21`	included

Time bounds

Format	Example	Granularity
`HH:MM`	`09:00`	minute
`HH:MM:SS`	`09:00:30`	second

Combined datetime bounds

Any date format above followed by a space and a time:

Feb/21 09:00
02/21 09:00:30
02-21-2024 10:15
2024-02-21T10:15:30
2024-02-21 10:15:30

ISO 8601 T separator and a plain space are both accepted.

Rules and Limitations

Inclusive bounds: .. ranges include both endpoints (>= lower AND <= upper).
No midnight wraparound: 23:00 .. 01:00 is invalid. Use two comparison filters instead.
Mixed-mode ranges are rejected: both sides of a .. must use the same format (both time-only or both date).
Multiple date filters are OR-ed: a line passes if it satisfies any enabled date filter.
Lines without a timestamp pass through: continuation lines, stack traces, and multi-line messages are never hidden by date filters.
Requires a detected format parser: if logana cannot detect the log format, date filters return an error. This means plain-text logs without timestamps cannot be date-filtered.

Display

Date filters appear in the filter manager and sidebar as Date: <expression>, not as raw @date: patterns.

How It Works

Date filters are stored as regular FilterDef entries in the database with an @date: prefix in the pattern field (e.g. @date:01:00:00 .. 02:00:00). They are excluded from the text-filter pipeline and applied separately in refresh_visible() after text filters run, via retain() on visible_indices.

Timestamps are normalized to a canonical YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS.ffffff string before comparison, so all supported log format timestamps (ISO 8601, BSD, logback datetime, CLF, journalctl, Apache error, etc.) are comparable regardless of their original format.

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