Persistents in condition statements are accessed in the same way as in the prelude. The following action will fire when the persistent variable ent:archive_pages is greater than 3:
if ent:archive_pages > 3 then notify(...)
Persistent flags and counters can also be tested with an associated timeframe. For example, the following action will fire when persistent variable ent:archive_pages is greater than 3 and the last time it as set was within the last two hours:
if ent:archive_pages > 3 within 2 hours then notify(...)
The syntax of timeframe-limited predicates is as follows:
<pvar> (<= | >= | < | > | == | !=) <expr> within <expr> (weeks| days| hours | minutes| seconds)
where <pvar> is a persistent flag or counter and <expr> is any valid KRL expression that returns a number.
Persistent trails can be tested using the seen predicate. There are two forms. The first form asks whether a regular expression has been seen within an optional timeframe (specified exactly as above). So, you can say:
if seen re#/archive/2006# in ent:my_trail then notify(...)
or
if seen re#/archive/2006# in ent:my_trail within 3 days then notify(...)
The second form of special predicates for trails allows for checking whether a match of one regular expression appears before an item matched by another. This example would fire the action when a place matching the regular expression re#/archive/2006# was put on the trail before a place matching the regular expression re#/archive/2007#.
if seen re#/archive/2006# before re#/archive/2007# in ent:my_trail then notify(...)
Note that before in the preceding conditional is not the same as the before operator in an eventex event though they share the same name.