Query with where page not starts with

General
1

Help me fix this query

${query[[
from index.tag "page"
order by lastModified desc
where string.startsWith(page, "/meta") = False
select {
Page = "[[" .. name .. "|" .. utils.ellipsis(name, 40) .. "]]",
Maturity = maturity,
kind = kind,
Tags = tags,
}
limit 10
]]}

I tried finding relevant docs and putting claude to the task, but did not find the syntax for where not page starts with

2

The main issue is False, Lua is case-sensitive, so boolean literals must be lowercase. You can also simplify the condition using not. Here’s the corrected query:

${query[[
from index.tag "page"
order by lastModified desc
where not string.startsWith(name, "/meta")
select {
  Page = "[[" .. name .. "|" .. (#name > 40 and string.sub(name, 1, 40) .. "..." or name) .. "]]",
  Maturity = maturity,
  Kind = kind,
  Tags = tags,
}
limit 10
]]}

Changes made:
1. where string.startsWith(page, "/meta") = False → where not string.startsWith(name, "/meta")
• False is invalid — Lua uses false (lowercase)
• Using not is cleaner and more idiomatic than comparing to a boolean
2. kind = kind → Kind = kind — capitalized the key to match the style of the other fields (Page, Maturity, Tags). This is optional but keeps it consistent.
3. Also the attribute page for the page is invalid so you need to use “name” So string.startsWith(name,…)
4. As far as i know utila is not available so you need to replace that too: with
Page = "[[" .. name .. "|" .. (#name > 40 and string.sub(name, 1, 40) .. "..." or name) .. "]]",

If you specifically need the equality comparison style instead of not, the valid form would be:

where string.startsWith(name, "/meta") == false
Note the double == for equality comparison in Lua, not a single =.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

3

Note that a pagename can never start with /meta, so this query is still not going to work.
If you want to exclude meta pages, it might make more sense to tag meta-pages with #meta.