Hey, I'm wondering, is there no elegant way to have a file cache hold the first and last frame? Just about 99% of the time that's the behavior I need, instead the file cache outputs nothing outside of its cached range.

The new file cache has two parameters, "Clamp First Frame" and "Clamp Last Frame", but they don't seem to be doing anything, and the help for these parameters says: ???

I always put a Timeshift behind my file caches and set it to clamp, using the range from the file cache above it. But it's quite annoying having to always use two nodes.

"Clamp First Frame" and "Clamp Last Frame" have no references inside node. I find only values in File Cache - Advanced - Path tab (modifying frame number in saved files).
Node don't have time shift node inside. And maybe, best solution it's put Time Shift and his parameters to File Cache by yourself. Then save this HDA.

Alright, thanks!
It's surprising to me that this isn't built-in functionality, I seem to need it pretty much every time.

clamping on the File Cache seems to work only for Constructed path since it affects Advanced/Path/frame parameter directly
so if you use Explicit path with $F it will not have any effect on that

I'd suggest submitting a bug

in meantime you can replace $F in your path with `ch("frame")` which will respect clamping

Thank you Tomas, that was excellent investigation!

I've logged a bug for it.