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The org documentation tells us that we can use special syntax for a deadline to have a warning period:

You can specify a different lead time for warnings for a specific deadlines using the following syntax. Here is an example with a warning period of 5 days ‘DEADLINE: <2004-02-29 Sun -5d>’. This warning is deactivated if the task gets scheduled and you set org-agenda-skip-deadline-prewarning-if-scheduled to t.

This is also supported by Orgzly, where I want to use it.

I'd assume that I could call org-deadline with this syntax but it just throws out the warning period:

(org-deadline nil "<2021-07-20 Tue -1d>") ;; => DEADLINE: <2021-07-20 Tue>

The documentation of org-deadline says

With two universal prefix arguments, prompt for a warning delay.

But this doesn't help me since I don't want to call interactively.

Since my entries get automatically updated by calendar sync I also have the requirement that the previous DEADLINE: entry has to get removed in this case, which is automatically handled by org-deadline. I assume I could handle this with org-remove-timestamp-with-keyword but I'm not sure which function to use for timestamp insertion if org-deadline doesn't support the warning period syntax.

How do I insert a deadline from elisp with a warning period?

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    I think this is a bug: the function org--deadline-or-schedule saves a repeater (e.g +2d ) and adds it back at the end, but the regexp does not match a warning period (e.g. -2d) so it drops it. You should probably report it with M-x org-submit-bug-report. Commented Jul 20, 2021 at 18:09
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    Update: this was in fact just verified as a bug. See orgmode.org/list/[email protected]. Commented Sep 1, 2021 at 10:57

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Per NickD's comment this may well be a bug. In the meantime, it looks like this does what you're aiming for (or at least points you in the right direction):

(defun dunne//add-deadline-warning (w) (save-excursion (org-back-to-heading t) (let* ((regexp org-deadline-time-regexp)) (if (not (re-search-forward regexp (line-end-position 2) t)) (user-error "No deadline information to update") (let* ((rpl0 (match-string 1)) (rpl (replace-regexp-in-string " -[0-9]+[hdwmy]" "" rpl0))) (replace-match (concat org-deadline-string " <" rpl (format " -%dd" w) ">") t t)))))) (defun dunne//add-deadline-with-warning (w) (org-deadline nil) (dunne//add-deadline-warning w))

I mined the contents of dunne//add-deadline-warning from the two-prefix case in org--deadline-or-schedule and ripped out the logic to handle existing deadlines / allow selecting a warning date.

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  • Thank you, this works! If anyone is wondering: w is expected to be a (positive) decimal number. Commented Jul 21, 2021 at 15:31

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