Frequently asked questions

hledger and ledger

How does hledger relate to ledger ?

hledger was inspired by and is partly a clone of John Wiegley's ledger, specifically Ledger 3.

I was a happy ledger user and contributor for some time; I still use it occasionally. I wrote hledger because I wanted to develop financial tools in the Haskell programming language and ecosystem, whose advantages I believe are compelling. I have also tried to make hledger a little more simple, usable, installable, documented, appealing to collaborators, and to provide alternate user interfaces to make it more widely useful.

ledger has more advanced power-user features on the command-line (periodic and modifier transactions, budgets, capital gains tracking, value expressions, custom output formats, etc.) and it remains faster and more memory efficient (for now!)...

hledger builds faster and has an up-to-date manual and an optional web interface (which often works on ledger files too)...

The two projects collaborate freely. We share the #ledger IRC channel but have separate mail lists (hledger list, ledger-cli list). I try to give back by providing infrastructure (ledger-cli.org) and IRC support. hledger stays compatible with ledger wherever possible, so that you can often use both tools on the same data file.

Summary: hledger is a friendly, co-evolving, compatible rewrite of Ledger in Haskell, lacking some of ledger's power features and raw performance, and focussing on robustness, usability, ease of development, and experimental add-ons such as the web interface.

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 most specialised syntax. 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, eg hledger comments vs ledger comments.

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.

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