santifer/career-ops · error · Error

--from (${from}) must not be after --to (${to}).

Error message

--from (${from}) must not be after --to (${to}).

What it means

weekly-digest.mjs rejects an inverted explicit range: when both --from and --to are supplied but from > to, it throws instead of silently returning an empty digest (which was previously indistinguishable from 'no interviews this week'). Dates compare lexicographically as ISO YYYY-MM-DD strings, which is correct only when the strict format is used.

Source

Thrown at weekly-digest.mjs:303

  from,
  to,
  sessionsDir = DEFAULT_SESSIONS_DIR,
  questionBankPath = DEFAULT_QUESTION_BANK_PATH,
} = {}) {
  // Range resolution has three cases, not two:
  //   - neither --from nor --to given -> default current-week range (unchanged)
  //   - exactly one of --from/--to given -> ambiguous, hard error (was:
  //     silently fell back to the default range, which quietly discarded
  //     the one bound the caller did supply)
  //   - both given but from > to -> hard error (was: silently returned an
  //     empty digest, indistinguishable from "no interviews this week")
  let range;
  if (from === undefined && to === undefined) {
    range = computeDefaultRange();
  } else if (from === undefined || to === undefined) {
    throw new Error('--from and --to must both be supplied together (or neither, to use the default current-week range).');
  } else if (from > to) {
    throw new Error(`--from (${from}) must not be after --to (${to}).`);
  } else {
    range = { from, to };
  }

  const allSessions = loadSessions(sessionsDir);
  const sessionsInRange = allSessions.filter((s) => inRange(s.date, range.from, range.to));

  const companyNames = [...new Set(sessionsInRange.map((s) => s.company))];
  // "File exists" and "file has usable content" are independent questions —
  // an existing-but-empty question-bank.md is a different state than a
  // missing one, and the metadata (and printSummary's "present but
  // unmatched" branch) needs to be able to tell them apart.
  const questionBankFound = existsSync(questionBankPath);
  // existsSync() succeeding doesn't guarantee readFileSync() will: the path
  // could be a directory, permissions could block the read, or the file
  // could be deleted between the two calls (TOCTOU). Any of those is an
  // optional-data problem, not a reason to abort the whole digest — degrade
  // to "no usable content" the same way a missing file does, but keep

View on GitHub (pinned to 60398d6549)

Solutions

1. Swap the flags so --from is the earlier ISO date
2. Always use strict YYYY-MM-DD for both bounds
3. Re-run with the corrected pair; the digest is read-only so there is nothing to undo

Example fix

# before
node weekly-digest.mjs --from 2026-08-20 --to 2026-08-10
# after
node weekly-digest.mjs --from 2026-08-10 --to 2026-08-20

if (from !== undefined && to !== undefined && from > to) {
  [from, to] = [to, from]; // or hard-stop: throw new Error('inverted range')
}
// Also normalize: enforce /^\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2}$/ on both before comparing

function isOrderedIsoRange(from, to) {
  const ISO = /^\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2}$/;
  return ISO.test(from) && ISO.test(to) && from <= to;
}

try {
  await runDigest({ from, to });
} catch (err) {
  if (/must not be after/.test(err.message)) {
    console.error('inverted range — swap the two dates');
    process.exit(2);
  }
  throw err;
}

When it happens

Trigger: `node weekly-digest.mjs --from 2026-08-20 --to 2026-08-10`. Also triggered by mixed formats (e.g. --to 08/16/2026) because non-ISO strings compare unpredictably and can land in the from > to branch.

Common situations: Swapping start/end when copying a command; mixed locale date habits (MM/DD vs DD/MM); typing the newer date first intending 'between these two'.

Related errors

• --from and --to must both be supplied together (or neither,
• NOT_APPLIED
• --${name} is required
• --${name} must not contain tabs or newlines
• --${name} must be a percentage (e.g. 70 or 70%), got "${v}"

AI-assisted analysis of santifer/career-ops@60398d6549 (2026-08-20). Data as JSON: /api/errors/55d11e87885c88b3. Report an issue: GitHub.