hledger/site/faq.md

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Frequently asked questions

hledger and Ledger

How does hledger relate to Ledger ?

hledger was inspired by John Wiegley's Ledger. It is a friendly, mostly compatible rewrite of Ledger in Haskell, begun in 2007 (Ledger started in 2003), focussing on robustness, usability, ease of development, long-term maintainability, and new experiments such as the web interface. It currently lacks some of Ledger's power-user features and speed. hledger stays compatible with Ledger wherever possible, so that with a little care you can use both tools on the same data files.

Longer answer: I was a happy Ledger user and contributor for some time, then became too dissatisfied with bugs, missing/wrong documentation and a long period of stagnation. I also wanted to try implementing Ledger's brilliant design in the Haskell programming language and ecosystem, which I believe has compelling advantages. I try to build on Ledger's experience to make hledger easier to learn and use, better documented, more appealing to work on; and to provide alternate user interfaces (interactive, curses, web) to make it useful to more people.

hledger builds quickly and has a complete and accurate manual, an easier report query syntax, a data entry assistant, an optional web interface (which often works on Ledger files too), and multi-column balance reports. Ledger has additional power-user features (capital gains tracking, periodic and modifier transactions, budget reports, custom value expressions..) and it remains faster and more memory efficient (for now!).

The two projects collaborate freely. For some time we shared the #ledger IRC channel; in 2014 I added a dedicated #hledger channel. I give back to Ledger by providing infrastructure (ledger-cli.org), IRC support, LedgerTips etc.

And Ledger 4 ?

There is also a ledger4 on github; this is John's own rewrite of the core of Ledger 3 in haskell. It's an early library prototype, not a usable tool. Perhaps some day hledger or something like it would use this as its foundation.

File format differences ?

hledger's file format is mostly identical with Ledger's, by design. Generally, it's easy to keep a journal file that works with both hledger and Ledger if you avoid Ledger's and hledger's more specialised syntax (or keep it in separate files which you include only when appropriate).

Some Ledger syntax is parsed but ignored (such as automated transactions, periodic transactions, and historical prices). Some features are not currently parsed and will cause an error, eg Ledger's more recent top-level directives. There can also be subtle differences in parser behaviour, such as with hledger comments vs Ledger comments, or balance assertions.

Feature differences ?

hledger mimics a subset of Ledger 3.x, and adds some features of its own.

We currently support:

• Ledger's journal format, mostly
• csv format
• timelog format
• regular journal transactions
• multiple commodities
• fixed prices
• virtual postings
• print, register & balance commands
• filtering by many criteria, with different query syntax
• display expressions containing just a simple date predicate
• some basic output formatting

We do not support:

• automated transactions
• value expressions
• fluctuating prices and historical price records
• display formats other than d>[DATE] or similar
• budget reports

And we add these commands:

• add
• balancesheet
• cashflow
• chart
• incomestatement
• irr
• interest
• vty
• web

Option/command differences ?

Ledger options and commands not supported include:

Basic options:
-o, --output FILE      write output to FILE
-i, --init-file FILE   initialize ledger using FILE (default: ~/.ledgerrc)
-a, --account NAME     use NAME for the default account (useful with QIF)

Report filtering:
-c, --current          show only current and past entries (not future)
--period-sort EXPR sort each report period's entries by EXPR
-L, --actual           consider only actual (non-automated) transactions
--budget           generate budget entries based on periodic entries
--add-budget       show all transactions plus the budget
--unbudgeted       show only unbudgeted transactions
--forecast EXPR    generate forecast entries while EXPR is true
-l, --limit EXPR       calculate only transactions matching EXPR
-t, --amount EXPR      use EXPR to calculate the displayed amount
-T, --total EXPR       use EXPR to calculate the displayed total

Output customization:
-n, --collapse         Only show totals in the top-most accounts.
-P, --by-payee         show summarized totals by payee
-x, --comm-as-payee    set commodity name as the payee, for reporting
--dow              show a days-of-the-week report
-S, --sort EXPR        sort report according to the value expression EXPR
--head COUNT       show only the first COUNT entries (negative inverts)
--tail COUNT       show only the last COUNT entries (negative inverts)
--pager PAGER      send all output through the given PAGER program
-A, --average          report average transaction amount
-D, --deviation        report deviation from the average
-%, --percentage       report balance totals as a percentile of the parent
--totals           in the "xml" report, include running total
-j, --amount-data      print only raw amount data (useful for scripting)
-J, --total-data       print only raw total data
-y, --date-format STR  use STR as the date format (default: %Y/%m/%d)
--balance-format      --register-format       --print-format
--plot-amount-format  --plot-total-format     --equity-format
--prices-format       --wide-register-format

Commodity reporting:
--price-db FILE    sets the price database to FILE (def: ~/.pricedb)
-L, --price-exp MINS   download quotes only if newer than MINS (def: 1440)
-Q, --download         download price information when needed
-O, --quantity         report commodity totals (this is the default)
-V, --market           report last known market value
-g, --performance      report gain/loss for each displayed transaction
-G, --gain             report net gain/loss

Commands:
xml      [REGEXP]...   print matching entries in XML format
equity   [REGEXP]...   output equity entries for matching accounts
prices   [REGEXP]...   display price history for matching commodities
entry DATE PAYEE AMT   output a derived entry, based on the arguments

Other functionality differences ?

• hledger recognises description and negative patterns by "desc:" and "not:" prefixes, unlike Ledger 3's free-form parser

• hledger does not require a space between command-line flags and their values, eg -fFILE works as well as -f FILE

• hledger's weekly reporting intervals always start on mondays

• hledger shows start and end dates of the intervals requested, not just the span containing data

• hledger always shows timelog balances in hours

• hledger splits multi-day timelog sessions at midnight by default (Ledger does this with an option)

• hledger doesn't track the value of commodities with varying price; prices are fixed as of the transaction date

• hledger's output follows the decimal point character, digit grouping, and digit group separator character used in the journal.

• hledger print shows amounts for all postings, and shows unit prices for amounts which have them. (This means that it does not currently print multi-commodity transactions in valid journal format.)

• hledger print ignores the --date2 flag, always showing both dates. ledger print shows only the secondary date with --aux-date, but not vice versa.

• hledger's default commodity directive (D) sets the commodity to be used for subsequent commodityless amounts, and also sets that commodity's display settings if such an amount is the first seen. Ledger uses D only for commodity display settings and for the entry command.

• hledger generates a description for timelog sessions, instead of taking it from the clock-out entry

• hledger's include directive does not support shell glob patterns (eg include *.journal ), which Ledger does.

• when checking balance assertions hledger sorts the account's postings first by date and then (for postings with the same date) by parse order. Ledger goes strictly by parse order.

• Ledger allows amounts to have a fixed lot price and a regular price in any order (and uses whichever appears first). hledger requires the fixed lot price to come last (and ignores it).

Implementation differences ?

Ledger is written in C++, whereas hledger is written in Haskell. Haskell is a highly regarded up-and-coming programming language that enables a coding style known as pure functional programming, offering the promise of more bug-free and maintainable software built in fewer lines of code. Haskell also provides a more abstracted, portable platform which can make deployment and installation easier in some cases.

UI surprises

Why does it complain about missing amounts ? I put one there

This is an easy mistake at first. This journal entry:

1/1
  a 1
  b

will give a parse error (...can't have more than one real posting with no amount...).

There must always be at least two spaces between the account name and amount. So instead, it should be:

1/1
  a  1
  b

Why do some amounts appear on their own line with no account name ?

When hledger needs to show a multi-commodity amount, each commodity is displayed on its own line, one above the other (like Ledger).

Here are some examples. With this journal, the implicit balancing amount drawn from the b account will be a multicommodity amount (a euro and a dollar):

2015/1/1
    a         EUR 1
    a         USD 1
    b

the print command shows the b posting's amount on two lines, bottom-aligned:

$ hledger -f t.j print
2015/01/01
    a         USD 1
    a         EUR 1
             EUR -1  ; <-
    b        USD -1  ; <- a euro and a dollar is drawn from b

the balance command shows that both a and b have a multi-commodity balance (again, bottom-aligned):

$ hledger -f t.j balance
               EUR 1     ; <-
               USD 1  a  ; <- a's balance is a euro and a dollar
              EUR -1     ; <-
              USD -1  b  ; <- b's balance is a negative euro and dollar
--------------------
                   0

while the register command shows (top-aligned, this time) a multi-commodity running total after the second posting, and a multi-commodity amount in the third posting:

$ hledger -f t.j register --width 50
2015/01/01       a             EUR 1         EUR 1
                 a             USD 1         EUR 1  ; <- the running total is now a euro and a dollar        
                                             USD 1  ;                                                        
                 b            EUR -1                ; <- the amount posted to b is a negative euro and dollar
                              USD -1             0  ;

Newer reports like multi-column balance reports show multi-commodity amounts on one line instead, comma-separated. Although wider, this seems clearer and we should probably use it more:

$ hledger -f t.j balance --yearly
Balance changes in 2015:

   ||           2015 
===++================
 a ||   EUR 1, USD 1 
 b || EUR -1, USD -1 
---++----------------
   ||              0 

You will also see amounts without a corresponding account name if you remove too many account name segments with --drop:

$ hledger -f t.j balance --drop 1
               EUR 1  
               USD 1  
              EUR -1  
              USD -1  
--------------------
                   0