Error parsing rez-search --before/--after with relative time in bash

[hww-nikhilshankarnoble]

Attempting to use the --before/--after command-line flags for rez-search is giving me CLI parsing errors when specifying a relative time instead of an epoch timestamp, when using Bash on Linux (I don't currently have access to a Windows box to test on, apologies).

Environment

• OS: Tested across Ubuntu 22.04 and Rocky Linux 9.7
• Shell: bash
• Rez version: Reproducible with 3.1.1 and 3.3.0
• Rez python version: 3.10.12 (Ubuntu) and 3.9.25 (Rocky)

To Reproduce

Run the following command in a Bash shell, attempting to search for any packages released in the last day:

$ rez-search "*" --after '-1d'
rez search: error: argument --after: expected one argument  

This behaviour is the same when quoting with double quotes or trying to escape the minus:

 $ rez-search "*" --after "-1d"
rez search: error: argument --after: expected one argument  
 $ rez-search "*" --after \-1d
rez search: error: argument --after: expected one argument  

Using the epoch timestamp instead of a relative time works as expected:

 $ rez-search "*" --after 1773852883
fastapi
numpy

Expected behavior
The packages before/after the relative time being listed.

Actual behavior
A CLI argument parsing error (listed above)

[JeanChristopheMorinPerso]

Hi @hww-nikhilshankarnoble, can you try--after='-1'? This is unfortunately a quirk of argparse and I don't know if there's an easy fix for it.

[hww-nikhilshankarnoble]

Heya @JeanChristopheMorinPerso yes running with --after='-1' doesn't fail for me, but seems to be returning all packages in the repository as far as I can tell?

$ rez-search "*" --paths $repo_path --after='-1'  | wc -l
56
$ ls $repo_path | wc -l
56

[hww-nikhilshankarnoble]

Ah actually I think it's reading -1 as an epoch time? Which I guess would makes sense as all of our packages are released after 1970.

src/rez/utils/formatting.py

def get_epoch_time_from_str(s):
    """Convert a string into epoch time. Examples of valid strings:

        1418350671  # already epoch time
        -12s        # 12 seconds ago
        -5.4m       # 5.4 minutes ago
    """
    try:
        return int(s)
    except:
        pass
    ....

Maybe not, now I'm very confused... will try and have a look into this over the weekend if I have time:

$ rez-search "*" --paths $repo_path --before='-1'  | wc -l
56
$ rez-search "*" --paths $repo_path --before='1'  | wc -l
56