Org Agenda - Matching multiple TODO keywords in custom commands

Question

This is probably pretty simple, but for some reason I can't seem to get this to work.

I have a block agenda that should list all the headlines with NEXT as well as DONE and DROPPED todo states. I want one block to show Done and Dropped, and another one to show NEXT.

I currently have this in org-agenda-custom-commands:

("n" "Next"
  ((tags-todo "/+DONE|+DROPPED" ((org-agenda-overriding-header "Done/Dropped:")))
  (todo "NEXT" ((org-agenda-overriding-header "Next:")))))

The NEXT block works, but the "Done/Dropped" block is blank. When I use this match syntax in the Agenda's actual match/search (C-c a m), it works, but for some reason it doesn't work in custom commands.

Perhaps some of the characters need to be escaped? I've tried various combinations of escaping with \, but no success so far.

Answer 1

You can to this with a plain tags query just by dropping the + from the search:

("n" "Next"
  ((tags "/DONE|DROPPED" ((org-agenda-overriding-header "Done/Dropped:")))
  (todo "NEXT" ((org-agenda-overriding-header "Next:")))))

The + operator on a keyword or tag makes entries require the tag to match. So +DONE|+DROPPED requires both DONE and DROPPED, which is impossible since an entries can have only one todo keyword. + is essential the AND operator.

An alternate way to do the same thing is to use the regular expression syntax: TODO={DONE\\|DROPPED}. This is the only way to avoid a set of keywords since the search syntax doesn't allow grouping.

Answer 2

You can use the following (per the comments above and my own testing) to do this:

("n" "Next"
  ((todo "DONE|DROPPED" ((org-agenda-overriding-header "Done/Dropped:")))
  (todo "NEXT" ((org-agenda-overriding-header "Next:")))))