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OPTIONS

General options

To see general usage help, including general options which are supported by most hledger commands, run hledger -h.

General help options:

helpoptions

General input options:

inputoptions

General reporting options:

reportingoptions

Command options

To see options for a particular command, including command-specific options, run: hledger COMMAND -h.

Command-specific options must be written after the command name, eg: hledger print -x.

Additionally, if the command is an addon, you may need to put its options after a double-hyphen, eg: hledger ui -- --watch. Or, you can run the addon executable directly: hledger-ui --watch.

Command arguments

Most hledger commands accept arguments after the command name, which are often a query, filtering the data in some way.

Argument files

You can save a set of command line options/arguments in a file, one per line, and then reuse them by writing @FILENAME in a command line. To prevent this expansion of @-arguments, precede them with a -- argument. For more, see Save frequently used options.

Special characters in arguments and queries

In shell command lines, option and argument values which contain "problematic" characters, ie spaces, and also characters significant to your shell such as <, >, (, ), | and $, should be escaped by enclosing them in quotes or by writing backslashes before the characters. Eg:

hledger register -p 'last year' "accounts receivable (receivable|payable)" amt:\>100.

More escaping

Characters significant both to the shell and in regular expressions may need one extra level of escaping. These include parentheses, the pipe symbol and the dollar sign. Eg, to match the dollar symbol, bash users should do:

hledger balance cur:'\$'

or:

hledger balance cur:\\$

Even more escaping

When hledger runs an addon executable (eg you type hledger ui, hledger runs hledger-ui), it de-escapes command-line options and arguments once, so you might need to triple-escape. Eg in bash, running the ui command and matching the dollar sign, it's:

hledger ui cur:'\\$'

or:

hledger ui cur:\\\\$

If you asked why four slashes above, this may help:

unescaped: $ escaped: \$ double-escaped: \\$ triple-escaped: \\\\$

(The number of backslashes in fish shell is left as an exercise for the reader.)

You can always avoid the extra escaping for addons by running the addon directly:

hledger-ui cur:\\$

Less escaping

Inside an argument file, or in the search field of hledger-ui or hledger-web, or at a GHCI prompt, you need one less level of escaping than at the command line. And backslashes may work better than quotes. Eg:

ghci> :main balance cur:\$

Command line tips

If in doubt, keep things simple:

  • write options after the command (hledger CMD -OPTIONS ARGS)
  • run add-on executables directly (hledger-ui -OPTIONS ARGS)
  • enclose problematic args in single quotes
  • if needed, also add a backslash to escape regexp metacharacters

To find out exactly how a command line is being parsed, add --debug=2 to troubleshoot.

Unicode characters

hledger is expected to handle non-ascii characters correctly:

  • they should be parsed correctly in input files and on the command line, by all hledger tools (add, iadd, hledger-web's search/add/edit forms, etc.)

  • they should be displayed correctly by all hledger tools, and on-screen alignment should be preserved.

This requires a well-configured environment. Here are some tips:

  • A system locale must be configured, and it must be one that can decode the characters being used. In bash, you can set a locale like this: export LANG=en_US.UTF-8. There are some more details in Troubleshooting. This step is essential - without it, hledger will quit on encountering a non-ascii character (as with all GHC-compiled programs).

  • your terminal software (eg Terminal.app, iTerm, CMD.exe, xterm..) must support unicode

  • the terminal must be using a font which includes the required unicode glyphs

  • the terminal should be configured to display wide characters as double width (for report alignment)

  • on Windows, for best results you should run hledger in the same kind of environment in which it was built. Eg hledger built in the standard CMD.EXE environment (like the binaries on our download page) might show display problems when run in a cygwin or msys terminal, and vice versa. (See eg #961).

Input files

hledger reads transactions from a data file (and the add command writes to it). By default this file is $HOME/.hledger.journal (or on Windows, something like C:/Users/USER/.hledger.journal). You can override this with the $LEDGER_FILE environment variable:

$ setenv LEDGER_FILE ~/finance/2016.journal
$ hledger stats

or with the -f/--file option:

$ hledger -f /some/file stats

The file name - (hyphen) means standard input:

$ cat some.journal | hledger -f-

Usually the data file is in hledger's journal format, but it can also be one of several other formats, listed below. hledger detects the format automatically based on the file extension, or if that is not recognised, by trying each built-in "reader" in turn:

Reader: Reads: Used for file extensions:
journal hledger's journal format, also some Ledger journals .journal .j .hledger .ledger
timeclock timeclock files (precise time logging) .timeclock
timedot timedot files (approximate time logging) .timedot
csv comma-separated values (data interchange) .csv

If needed (eg to ensure correct error messages when a file has the "wrong" extension), you can force a specific reader/format by prepending it to the file path with a colon. Examples:

$ hledger -f csv:/some/csv-file.dat stats
$ echo 'i 2009/13/1 08:00:00' | hledger print -ftimeclock:-

You can also specify multiple -f options, to read multiple files as one big journal. There are some limitations with this:

  • directives in one file will not affect the other files
  • balance assertions will not see any account balances from previous files

If you need those, either use the include directive, or concatenate the files, eg: cat a.journal b.journal | hledger -f- CMD.

Smart dates

hledger's user interfaces accept a flexible "smart date" syntax (unlike dates in the journal file). Smart dates allow some english words, can be relative to today's date, and can have less-significant date parts omitted (defaulting to 1).

Examples:

2004/10/1, 2004-01-01, 2004.9.1 exact date, several separators allowed. Year is 4+ digits, month is 1-12, day is 1-31 2004 start of year 2004/10 start of month 10/1 month and day in current year 21 day in current month october, oct start of month in current year yesterday, today, tomorrow -1, 0, 1 days from today last/this/next day/week/month/quarter/year -1, 0, 1 periods from the current period 20181201 8 digit YYYYMMDD with valid year month and day 201812 6 digit YYYYMM with valid year and month

Counterexamples - malformed digit sequences might give surprising results:

201813 6 digits with an invalid month is parsed as start of 6-digit year 20181301 8 digits with an invalid month is parsed as start of 8-digit year 20181232 8 digits with an invalid day gives an error 201801012 9+ digits beginning with a valid YYYYMMDD gives an error

Report start & end date

Most hledger reports show the full span of time represented by the journal data, by default. So, the effective report start and end dates will be the earliest and latest transaction or posting dates found in the journal.

Often you will want to see a shorter time span, such as the current month. You can specify a start and/or end date using -b/--begin, -e/--end, -p/--period or a date: query (described below). All of these accept the smart date syntax.

Some notes:

  • As in Ledger, end dates are exclusive, so you need to write the date after the last day you want to include.
  • As noted in reporting options: among start/end dates specified with options, the last (i.e. right-most) option takes precedence.
  • The effective report start and end dates are the intersection of the start/end dates from options and that from date: queries. That is, date:2019-01 date:2019 -p'2000 to 2030' yields January 2019, the smallest common time span.

Examples:

-b 2016/3/17 begin on St. Patrick's day 2016 -e 12/1 end at the start of december 1st of the current year (11/30 will be the last date included) -b thismonth all transactions on or after the 1st of the current month -p thismonth all transactions in the current month
date:2016/3/17- the above written as queries instead date:-12/1
date:thismonth- date:thismonth

Report intervals

A report interval can be specified so that commands like register, balance and activity will divide their reports into multiple subperiods. The basic intervals can be selected with one of -D/--daily, -W/--weekly, -M/--monthly, -Q/--quarterly, or -Y/--yearly. More complex intervals may be specified with a period expression. Report intervals can not be specified with a query.

Period expressions

The -p/--period option accepts period expressions, a shorthand way of expressing a start date, end date, and/or report interval all at once.

Here's a basic period expression specifying the first quarter of 2009. Note, hledger always treats start dates as inclusive and end dates as exclusive:

-p "from 2009/1/1 to 2009/4/1"

Keywords like "from" and "to" are optional, and so are the spaces, as long as you don't run two dates together. "to" can also be written as "-". These are equivalent to the above:

-p "2009/1/1 2009/4/1" -p2009/1/1to2009/4/1 -p2009/1/1-2009/4/1

Dates are smart dates, so if the current year is 2009, the above can also be written as:

-p "1/1 4/1" -p "january-apr" -p "this year to 4/1"

If you specify only one date, the missing start or end date will be the earliest or latest transaction in your journal:

-p "from 2009/1/1" everything after january 1, 2009 -p "from 2009/1" the same -p "from 2009" the same -p "to 2009" everything before january 1, 2009

A single date with no "from" or "to" defines both the start and end date like so:

-p "2009" the year 2009; equivalent to "2009/1/1 to 2010/1/1" -p "2009/1" the month of jan; equivalent to "2009/1/1 to 2009/2/1" -p "2009/1/1" just that day; equivalent to "2009/1/1 to 2009/1/2"

The argument of -p can also begin with, or be, a report interval expression. The basic report intervals are daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly, which have the same effect as the -D,-W,-M,-Q, or -Y flags. Between report interval and start/end dates (if any), the word in is optional. Examples:

-p "weekly from 2009/1/1 to 2009/4/1" -p "monthly in 2008"
-p "quarterly"

Note that weekly, monthly, quarterly and yearly intervals will always start on the first day on week, month, quarter or year accordingly, and will end on the last day of same period, even if associated period expression specifies different explicit start and end date.

For example:

-p "weekly from 2009/1/1 to 2009/4/1" -- starts on 2008/12/29, closest preceeding Monday -p "monthly in 2008/11/25" -- starts on 2018/11/01
-p "quarterly from 2009-05-05 to 2009-06-01" - starts on 2009/04/01, ends on 2009/06/30, which are first and last days of Q2 2009 -p "yearly from 2009-12-29" - starts on 2009/01/01, first day of 2009

The following more complex report intervals are also supported: biweekly, bimonthly, every day|week|month|quarter|year, every N days|weeks|months|quarters|years.

All of these will start on the first day of the requested period and end on the last one, as described above.

Examples:

-p "bimonthly from 2008" -- periods will have boundaries on 2008/01/01, 2008/03/01, ... -p "every 2 weeks" -- starts on closest preceeding Monday -p "every 5 month from 2009/03" -- periods will have boundaries on 2009/03/01, 2009/08/01, ...

If you want intervals that start on arbitrary day of your choosing and span a week, month or year, you need to use any of the following:

every Nth day of week, every <weekday>, every Nth day [of month], every Nth weekday [of month], every MM/DD [of year], every Nth MMM [of year], every MMM Nth [of year].

Examples:

-p "every 2nd day of week" -- periods will go from Tue to Tue -p "every Tue" -- same -p "every 15th day" -- period boundaries will be on 15th of each month -p "every 2nd Monday" -- period boundaries will be on second Monday of each month -p "every 11/05" -- yearly periods with boundaries on 5th of Nov -p "every 5th Nov" -- same -p "every Nov 5th" -- same

Show historical balances at end of 15th each month (N is exclusive end date):

hledger balance -H -p "every 16th day"

Group postings from start of wednesday to end of next tuesday (N is start date and exclusive end date):

hledger register checking -p "every 3rd day of week"

Depth limiting

With the --depth N option (short form: -N), commands like account, balance and register will show only the uppermost accounts in the account tree, down to level N. Use this when you want a summary with less detail. This flag has the same effect as a depth: query argument (so -2, --depth=2 or depth:2 are basically equivalent).

Pivoting

Normally hledger sums amounts, and organizes them in a hierarchy, based on account name. The --pivot FIELD option causes it to sum and organize hierarchy based on the value of some other field instead. FIELD can be: code, description, payee, note, or the full name (case insensitive) of any tag. As with account names, values containing colon:separated:parts will be displayed hierarchically in reports.

--pivot is a general option affecting all reports; you can think of hledger transforming the journal before any other processing, replacing every posting's account name with the value of the specified field on that posting, inheriting it from the transaction or using a blank value if it's not present.

An example:

2016/02/16 Member Fee Payment
    assets:bank account                    2 EUR
    income:member fees                    -2 EUR  ; member: John Doe

Normal balance report showing account names:

$ hledger balance
               2 EUR  assets:bank account
              -2 EUR  income:member fees
--------------------
                   0

Pivoted balance report, using member: tag values instead:

$ hledger balance --pivot member
               2 EUR
              -2 EUR  John Doe
--------------------
                   0

One way to show only amounts with a member: value (using a query, described below):

$ hledger balance --pivot member tag:member=.
              -2 EUR  John Doe
--------------------
              -2 EUR

Another way (the acct: query matches against the pivoted "account name"):

$ hledger balance --pivot member acct:.
              -2 EUR  John Doe
--------------------
              -2 EUR

Valuation

-B: Cost

The -B/--cost flag converts amounts to their cost (or selling price) at transaction time, if they have a transaction price specified. This flag is equivalent to --value=cost, described below.

-V: Market value

The -V/--market flag converts reported amounts to their market value in a default valuation commodity, using the historical market prices in effect on a default valuation date.

For single period reports, the valuation date is today. For multiperiod reports, it is the last day of each subperiod.

The valuation commodity will be the one referenced in the latest applicable market price dated on or before the valuation date. If most of your P declarations lead to a single home currency, this will usually be what you want.

Unlike the similar flag in Ledger, it does not infer market prices from transaction prices. In hledger, -B uses transaction prices, -V and -X use market prices.

It is equivalent to --value=now or --value=end.

Here's a quick example:

# one euro is worth this many dollars from nov 1
P 2016/11/01 € $1.10

# purchase some euros on nov 3
2016/11/3
    assets:euros        €100
    assets:checking

# the euro is worth fewer dollars by dec 21
P 2016/12/21 € $1.03

How many euros do I have ?

$ hledger -f t.j bal -N euros
                €100  assets:euros

What are they worth at end of nov 3 ?

$ hledger -f t.j bal -N euros -V -e 2016/11/4
             $110.00  assets:euros

What are they worth after 2016/12/21 ? (no report end date specified, defaults to today)

$ hledger -f t.j bal -N euros -V
             $103.00  assets:euros

-X: Market value in specified commodity

The -X/--exchange option is like -V/--market except it takes a commodity symbol argument, so that you can select a different target commodity. It is similar to the same option in Ledger, with the same caveat mentioned for -V/--value above. It is equivalent to --value=now,COMM or --value=end,COMM; for more details, read on.

--value

(experimental, added 201905)

-B, -V and -X are special cases of the more general --value option:

 --value=TYPE[,COMM]  TYPE is cost, end, now or YYYY-MM-DD.
                      COMM is an optional commodity symbol.
                      Shows amounts converted to:
                      - cost commodity using transaction prices (then optionally to COMM using market prices at period end(s))
                      - default valuation commodity (or COMM) using market prices at period end(s)
                      - default valuation commodity (or COMM) using current market prices
                      - default valuation commodity (or COMM) using market prices at some date

Valuation type

TYPE is one of these keywords, or their first letter, or a date (which must be 8 digits with - or / or . separators):

--value=cost : Convert amounts to cost, using the prices recorded in transactions. -B/--cost is equivalent to this.

--value=end : Convert amounts to their value in default valuation commodity using market prices on the last day of the report period (or of each subperiod in a multiperiod report). When no report period is specified, uses the journal's last transaction date.

--value=now : Convert amounts to their value in default valuation commodity using current market prices (as of when report is generated). -V/--market is equivalent to this.

--value=YYYY-MM-DD : Convert amounts to their value in default valuation commodity using market prices on this date. Eg --value=2019-04-25.

Valuation commodity

The default valuation commodity is the commodity mentioned in the most recent applicable market price declaration. When all your price declarations lead to a single home currency, this will usually do what you want.

To select a different valuation commodity: write the commodity symbol after the valuation type, separated by a comma (eg: --value=now,EUR). This will use, in this preferred order:

  • declared prices (from source commodity to valuation commodity)
  • reverse prices (declared prices from valuation to source commodity, inverted)
  • indirect prices (prices calculated from the shortest chain of declared or reverse prices from source to valuation commodity).

--value examples

Here are the effects of --value as seen with print:

P 2000-01-01 A  1 B
P 2000-02-01 A  2 B
P 2000-03-01 A  3 B
P 2000-04-01 A  4 B

2000-01-01
  (a)      1 A @ 5 B

2000-02-01
  (a)      1 A @ 6 B

2000-03-01
  (a)      1 A @ 7 B

Show the cost of each posting:

$ hledger -f- print --value=cost
2000/01/01
    (a)             5 B

2000/02/01
    (a)             6 B

2000/03/01
    (a)             7 B

Show the value as of the last day of the report period (2000-02-29):

$ hledger -f- print --value=end date:2000/01-2000/03
2000-01-01
    (a)             2 B

2000-02-01
    (a)             2 B

With no report period specified, that shows the value as of the last day of the journal (2000-03-01):

$ hledger -f- print --value=end
2000/01/01
    (a)             3 B

2000/02/01
    (a)             3 B

2000/03/01
    (a)             3 B

Show the current value (the 2000-04-01 price is still in effect today):

$ hledger -f- print --value=now
2000-01-01
    (a)             4 B

2000-02-01
    (a)             4 B

2000-03-01
    (a)             4 B

Show the value on 2000/01/15:

$ hledger -f- print --value=2000-01-15
2000/01/01
    (a)             1 B

2000/02/01
    (a)             1 B

2000/03/01
    (a)             1 B

You may need to explicitly set a commodity's display style, when reverse prices are used. Eg this output might be surprising:

P 2000-01-01 A 2B

2000-01-01
  a  1B
  b
$ hledger print -x -X A
2000/01/01
    a               0
    b               0

Explanation: because there's no amount or commodity directive specifying a display style for A, 0.5A gets the default style, which shows no decimal digits. Because the displayed amount looks like zero, the commodity symbol and minus sign are not displayed either. Adding a commodity directive sets a more useful display style for A:

P 2000-01-01 A 2B
commodity 0.00A

2000-01-01
  a  1B
  b
$ hledger print -X A
2000/01/01
    a           0.50A
    b          -0.50A

Effect of --value on reports

Below is how --value affects each of hledger's reports, currently. You're not expected to remember all this, but when troubleshooting a report, look here. If you find problems - useless reports, misbehaving reports, or error messages being printed - please report them (with reproducible examples) eg at #329.

Report type --value cost  --value end  --value DATE/now 

print
posting amounts cost, as recorded in transaction market value at report end market value at DATE
balance assertions/assignments show unvalued show unvalued show unvalued

register
starting balance with -H cost of starting balance market value at day before report start market value at DATE
posting amounts cost market value at report end market value at DATE
posting amounts, multiperiod summarised cost market value each summary posting at period end market value each summary posting at DATE
running total/average sum/average of the displayed values sum/average of the displayed values sum/average of the displayed values

balance (bs, cf, is..)
starting balances with -H costs of starting balances market value at day before report start of sum of previous postings market value at DATE of sum of previous postings
balances, simple balance report summed costs market value at period end of sum of postings market value at DATE of sum of postings
balances, multiperiod report summed costs market value at period end of sum of postings market value at DATE of sum of postings
budget amounts with --budget costs of budget amounts budget-setting periodic txns are valued at period end budget-setting periodic txns are valued at DATE
column/row/grand totals/averages sum/average of the displayed values market value at period end of sum/average of postings market value at DATE of sum/average of postings

Combining -B, -V, -X, --value

The rightmost of these flags wins.

Output destination

Some commands (print, register, stats, the balance commands) can write their output to a destination other than the console. This is controlled by the -o/--output-file option.

$ hledger balance -o -     # write to stdout (the default)
$ hledger balance -o FILE  # write to FILE

Output format

Some commands can write their output in other formats. Eg print and register can output CSV, and the balance commands can output CSV or HTML. This is controlled by the -O/--output-format option, or by specifying a .csv or .html file extension with -o/--output-file.

$ hledger balance -O csv       # write CSV to stdout
$ hledger balance -o FILE.csv  # write CSV to FILE.csv

Regular expressions

hledger uses regular expressions in a number of places:

  • query terms, on the command line and in the hledger-web search form: REGEX, desc:REGEX, cur:REGEX, tag:...=REGEX
  • CSV rules conditional blocks: if REGEX ...
  • account alias directives and options: alias /REGEX/ = REPLACEMENT, --alias /REGEX/=REPLACEMENT

hledger's regular expressions come from the regex-tdfa library. In general they:

Some things to note:

  • In the alias directive and --alias option, regular expressions must be enclosed in forward slashes (/REGEX/). Elsewhere in hledger, these are not required.

  • In queries, to match a regular expression metacharacter like $ as a literal character, prepend a backslash. Eg to search for amounts with the dollar sign in hledger-web, write cur:\$.

  • On the command line, some metacharacters like $ have a special meaning to the shell and so must be escaped at least once more. See Special characters.