Is Lion's new “Date Added” field supposed to work in the Trash?

Question

One of the little things in Lion I was most excited about was the Finder's new "Date Added" field. I wanted it for two folders in particular, for obvious reasons: the Downloads folder and the Trash.

Well, it works in Downloads, but as far as I can tell, not so much in the Trash. Now, when I first booted into Lion, Date Added didn't work anywhere. I suspected that it was because Spotlight wasn't done reindexing yet. Now that it's finished, Date Added is populated on new downloads, but still not in new Trash items.

Looks like it simply doesn't work. But maybe Spotlight is not the only thing involved. Am I missing something? Or am I doomed to futilely hoping they incorporate this in a point update?

Answer 1

The answer was basically in my original question. Spotlight is indeed the sole arbiter of the Date Added column. And the Trash, not being a real folder, is not Spotlight indexed.

If you move a file with a Date Added into the Trash, it keeps the Date Added from its original folder. If you then put it back, its Date Added (to the original folder) is updated to the present.

It would probably take a significant engineering effort to make this work for the Trash, so I'm not expecting to see this fixed before Mountain Lion, if ever.