diff -u /home/guerry/elisp/testing/org-5.16b/ /home/guerry/elisp/testing/tmp/org.el
--- /home/guerry/elisp/testing/org-5.16b/org.el	2007-12-04 08:40:13.000000000 +0000
+++ /home/guerry/elisp/testing/tmp/org.el	2007-12-09 22:32:07.000000000 +0000
@@ -14433,11 +14433,13 @@
 r      Show entries matching a regular expression"
   (interactive "P")
   (let (ans kwd value)
-    (message "Sparse tree: [/]regexp   [t]odo-kwd   [T]ag   [p]roperty  [d]eadlines")
+    (message "Sparse tree: [/]regexp  [t]odo-kwd  [T]ag  [p]roperty  [d]eadlines  [b]efore-date")
     (setq ans (read-char-exclusive))
     (cond
      ((equal ans ?d)
       (call-interactively 'org-check-deadlines))
+     ((equal ans ?b)
+      (call-interactively 'org-check-before-date))
      ((equal ans ?t)
       (org-show-todo-tree '(4)))
      ((equal ans ?T)
@@ -17372,6 +17374,20 @@
 	     (org-occur regexp nil callback)
 	     org-warn-days)))
 
+(defun org-check-before-date (date)
+  "Check if there are deadlines or scheduled entries before DATE."
+  (interactive (list (org-read-date)))
+  (let ((case-fold-search nil)
+	(regexp (concat "\\<\\(" org-deadline-string 
+			"\\|" org-scheduled-string 
+			"\\) *<\\([^>]+\\)>"))
+	(callback
+	 (lambda () (time-less-p
+		     (org-time-string-to-time (match-string 2))
+		     (org-time-string-to-time date)))))
+    (message "%d entries before %s"
+	     (org-occur regexp nil callback) date)))
+
 (defun org-evaluate-time-range (&optional to-buffer)
   "Evaluate a time range by computing the difference between start and end.
 Normally the result is just printed in the echo area, but with prefix arg

Diff finished.  Sun Dec  9 22:32:19 2007