
HLEDGER(1)                   hledger User Manuals                   HLEDGER(1)



NAME
       This  is  the  command-line  interface (CLI) for the hledger accounting
       tool.  Here we also describe hledger's concepts and file formats.  This
       manual is for hledger 1.20.99.

SYNOPSIS
       hledger

       hledger [-f FILE] COMMAND [OPTIONS] [ARGS]

       hledger [-f FILE] ADDONCMD -- [OPTIONS] [ARGS]

DESCRIPTION
       hledger  is  a  reliable,  cross-platform  set of programs for tracking
       money, time, or any other commodity, using double-entry accounting  and
       a  simple,  editable  file  format.  hledger is inspired by and largely
       compatible with ledger(1).

       The basic function of the hledger CLI is to read a plain text file  de-
       scribing  financial  transactions (in accounting terms, a general jour-
       nal) and print useful reports on standard output,  or  export  them  as
       CSV.   hledger can also read some other file formats such as CSV files,
       translating them to journal format.  Additionally, hledger lists  other
       hledger-*  executables found in the user's $PATH and can invoke them as
       subcommands.

       hledger reads data from one or more files  in  hledger  journal,  time-
       clock,  timedot,  or  CSV format specified with -f, or $LEDGER_FILE, or
       $HOME/.hledger.journal          (on          windows,           perhaps
       C:/Users/USER/.hledger.journal).  If using $LEDGER_FILE, note this must
       be a real environment variable, not a shell variable.  You can  specify
       standard input with -f-.

       Transactions  are  dated movements of money between two (or more) named
       accounts, and are recorded with journal entries like this:

              2015/10/16 bought food
               expenses:food          $10
               assets:cash

       For more about this format, see hledger_journal(5).

       Most users use a text editor to edit the journal, usually with an  edi-
       tor mode such as ledger-mode for added convenience.  hledger's interac-
       tive add command is another way to record  new  transactions.   hledger
       never changes existing transactions.

       To  get  started,  you  can  either save some entries like the above in
       ~/.hledger.journal, or run hledger add and follow  the  prompts.   Then
       try  some  commands like hledger print or hledger balance.  Run hledger
       with no arguments for a list of commands.

OPTIONS
   General options
       To see general usage help, including general  options  which  are  sup-
       ported by most hledger commands, run hledger -h.

       General help options:

       -h --help
              show general or COMMAND help

       --man  show general or COMMAND user manual with man

       --info show general or COMMAND user manual with info

       --version
              show general or ADDONCMD version

       --debug[=N]
              show debug output (levels 1-9, default: 1)

       General input options:

       -f FILE --file=FILE
              use  a  different  input  file.   For  stdin,  use  -  (default:
              $LEDGER_FILE or $HOME/.hledger.journal)

       --rules-file=RULESFILE
              Conversion  rules  file  to  use  when  reading  CSV   (default:
              FILE.rules)

       --separator=CHAR
              Field separator to expect when reading CSV (default: ',')

       --alias=OLD=NEW
              rename accounts named OLD to NEW

       --anon anonymize accounts and payees

       --pivot FIELDNAME
              use some other field or tag for the account name

       -I --ignore-assertions
              disable balance assertion checks (note: does not disable balance
              assignments)

       -s --strict
              do extra error checking (check that all posted accounts are  de-
              clared)

       General reporting options:

       -b --begin=DATE
              include postings/txns on or after this date

       -e --end=DATE
              include postings/txns before this date

       -D --daily
              multiperiod/multicolumn report by day

       -W --weekly
              multiperiod/multicolumn report by week

       -M --monthly
              multiperiod/multicolumn report by month

       -Q --quarterly
              multiperiod/multicolumn report by quarter

       -Y --yearly
              multiperiod/multicolumn report by year

       -p --period=PERIODEXP
              set  start date, end date, and/or reporting interval all at once
              using period expressions syntax

       --date2
              match the secondary date instead (see command help for other ef-
              fects)

       -U --unmarked
              include only unmarked postings/txns (can combine with -P or -C)

       -P --pending
              include only pending postings/txns

       -C --cleared
              include only cleared postings/txns

       -R --real
              include only non-virtual postings

       -NUM --depth=NUM
              hide/aggregate accounts or postings more than NUM levels deep

       -E --empty
              show  items with zero amount, normally hidden (and vice-versa in
              hledger-ui/hledger-web)

       -B --cost
              convert amounts to their cost/selling amount at transaction time

       -V --market
              convert amounts to their market value in default valuation  com-
              modities

       -X --exchange=COMM
              convert amounts to their market value in commodity COMM

       --value
              convert  amounts  to  cost  or  market value, more flexibly than
              -B/-V/-X

       --infer-value
              with -V/-X/--value, also infer market prices from transactions

       --auto apply automated posting rules to modify transactions.

       --forecast
              generate future transactions from  periodic  transaction  rules,
              for  the  next 6 months or till report end date.  In hledger-ui,
              also make ordinary future transactions visible.

       --color=WHEN (or --colour=WHEN)
              Should color-supporting commands use ANSI color  codes  in  text
              output.   'auto' (default): whenever stdout seems to be a color-
              supporting terminal.  'always' or 'yes': always, useful eg  when
              piping  output  into  'less  -R'.   'never'  or  'no': never.  A
              NO_COLOR environment variable overrides this.

       When a reporting option appears more than once in the command line, the
       last one takes precedence.

       Some reporting options can also be written as query arguments.

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

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

       Additionally,  if the command is an add-on, you may need to put its op-
       tions after a double-hyphen, eg: hledger ui -- --watch.   Or,  you  can
       run the add-on 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.

       You can save a set of command line options/arguments  in  a  file,  and
       then  reuse  them by writing @FILENAME as a command line argument.  Eg:
       hledger bal @foo.args.  (To prevent this, eg if you  have  an  argument
       that  begins  with  a literal @, precede it with --, eg: hledger bal --
       @ARG).

       Inside the argument file, each line should contain just one  option  or
       argument.  Avoid the use of spaces, except inside quotes (or you'll see
       a confusing error).  Between a flag and its argument, use =  (or  noth-
       ing).  Bad:

              assets depth:2
              -X USD

       Good:

              assets
              depth:2
              -X=USD

       For  special characters (see below), use one less level of quoting than
       you would at the command prompt.  Bad:

              -X"$"

       Good:

              -X$

       See also: Save frequently used options.

   Special characters
   Single escaping (shell metacharacters)
       In shell command lines, characters significant to your shell - such  as
       spaces,  <, >, (, ), |, $ and \ - should be "shell-escaped" if you want
       hledger to see them.  This is done by enclosing them in single or  dou-
       ble  quotes, or by writing a backslash before them.  Eg to match an ac-
       count name containing a space:

              $ hledger register 'credit card'

       or:

              $ hledger register credit\ card

   Double escaping (regular expression metacharacters)
       Characters significant in regular expressions (described below) -  such
       as  .,  ^,  $, [, ], (, ), |, and \ - may need to be "regex-escaped" if
       you don't want them to be interpreted by hledger's  regular  expression
       engine.   This  is  done  by writing backslashes before them, but since
       backslash is typically also a shell metacharacter, both  shell-escaping
       and  regex-escaping will be needed.  Eg to match a literal $ sign while
       using the bash shell:

              $ hledger balance cur:'\$'

       or:

              $ hledger balance cur:\\$

   Triple escaping (for add-on commands)
       When you use hledger to run an external add-on command  (described  be-
       low), one level of shell-escaping is lost from any options or arguments
       intended for by the add-on command, so those need  an  extra  level  of
       shell-escaping.   Eg  to  match  a  literal $ sign while using the bash
       shell and running an add-on command (ui):

              $ hledger ui cur:'\\$'

       or:

              $ hledger ui cur:\\\\$

       If you wondered why four backslashes, perhaps this helps:

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

       Or, you can avoid the extra escaping by running the  add-on  executable
       directly:

              $ hledger-ui cur:\\$

   Less escaping
       Options and arguments are sometimes used in places other than the shell
       command line, where shell-escaping is not needed, so there  you  should
       use one less level of escaping.  Those places include:

       o an @argumentfile

       o hledger-ui's filter field

       o hledger-web's search form

       o GHCI's prompt (used by developers).

   Unicode characters
       hledger is expected to handle non-ascii characters correctly:

       o 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.)

       o 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:

       o A system locale must be configured, and it must be one that  can  de-
         code  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  Trou-
         bleshooting.   This step is essential - without it, hledger will quit
         on encountering a non-ascii character (as with all GHC-compiled  pro-
         grams).

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

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

       o the  terminal should be configured to display wide characters as dou-
         ble width (for report alignment)

       o 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 stan-
         dard 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).

   Regular expressions
       hledger uses regular expressions in a number of places:

       o query terms, on the command line and in the hledger-web search  form:
         REGEX, desc:REGEX, cur:REGEX, tag:...=REGEX

       o CSV rules conditional blocks: if REGEX ...

       o account  alias  directives  and options: alias /REGEX/ = REPLACEMENT,
         --alias /REGEX/=REPLACEMENT

       hledger's regular expressions come from  the  regex-tdfa  library.   If
       they're  not doing what you expect, it's important to know exactly what
       they support:

       1. they are case insensitive

       2. they are infix matching (they do not need to match the entire  thing
          being matched)

       3. they are POSIX ERE (extended regular expressions)

       4. they also support GNU word boundaries (\b, \B, \<, \>)

       5. they  do  not support backreferences; if you write \1, it will match
          the digit 1.  Except when doing  text  replacement,  eg  in  account
          aliases,  where backreferences can be used in the replacement string
          to reference capturing groups in the search regexp.

       6. they do not support mode modifiers ((?s)),  character  classes  (\w,
          \d), or anything else not mentioned above.

       Some things to note:

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

       o 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:\$.

       o On  the command line, some metacharacters like $ have a special mean-
         ing to the shell and so must be escaped at least once more.  See Spe-
         cial characters.

ENVIRONMENT
       LEDGER_FILE The journal file path when not specified with -f.  Default:
       ~/.hledger.journal (on  windows,  perhaps  C:/Users/USER/.hledger.jour-
       nal).

       A  typical  value  is  ~/DIR/YYYY.journal,  where DIR is a version-con-
       trolled finance directory and YYYY is the current year.  Or  ~/DIR/cur-
       rent.journal, where current.journal is a symbolic link to YYYY.journal.

       On Mac computers, you can set this and other environment variables in a
       more thorough way that also affects applications started from  the  GUI
       (say, an Emacs dock icon).  Eg on MacOS Catalina I have a ~/.MacOSX/en-
       vironment.plist file containing

              {
                "LEDGER_FILE" : "~/finance/current.journal"
              }

       To see the effect you may need to killall Dock, or reboot.

       COLUMNS The screen width used by the register  command.   Default:  the
       full terminal width.

       NO_COLOR  If  this variable exists with any value, hledger will not use
       ANSI  color   codes   in   terminal   output.    This   overrides   the
       --color/--colour option.

DATA FILES
       hledger  reads  transactions  from one or more data files.  The default
       data 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 one or more -f/--file options:

              $ hledger -f /some/file -f another_file stats

       The file name - means standard input:

              $ cat some.journal | hledger -f-

   Data formats
       Usually  the data file is in hledger's journal format, but it can be in
       any of the supported file formats, which currently are:

       Reader:    Reads:                                    Used  for  file  exten-
                                                            sions:
       -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
       journal    hledger  journal  files and some Ledger   .journal  .j   .hledger
                  journals, for transactions                .ledger
       time-      timeclock files, for precise time  log-   .timeclock
       clock      ging
       timedot    timedot  files,  for  approximate  time   .timedot
                  logging
       csv        comma/semicolon/tab/other-separated       .csv .ssv .tsv
                  values, for data import

       These formats are described in their own sections, below.

       hledger  detects  the format automatically based on the file extensions
       shown above.  If it can't recognise  the  file  extension,  it  assumes
       journal  format.   So  for  non-journal  files, it's important to use a
       recognised file extension, so as to either read successfully or to show
       relevant error messages.

       You  can also force a specific reader/format by prefixing the file path
       with the format and a colon.  Eg, to read a .dat file as csv format:

              $ hledger -f csv:/some/csv-file.dat stats

       Or to read stdin (-) as timeclock format:

              $ echo 'i 2009/13/1 08:00:00' | hledger print -ftimeclock:-

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

       o most directives do not affect sibling files

       o balance  assertions  will  not see any account balances from previous
         files

       If you need either of those things, you can

       o use a single parent file which includes the others

       o or concatenate the files into one before reading, eg:  cat  a.journal
         b.journal | hledger -f- CMD.

   Strict mode
       hledger checks input files for valid data.  By default, the most impor-
       tant errors are detected, while  still  accepting  easy  journal  files
       without a lot of declarations:

       o Are the input files parseable, with valid syntax ?

       o Are all transactions balanced ?

       o Do all balance assertions pass ?

       With the -s/--strict flag, additional checks are performed:

       o Are  all  accounts  posted  to,  declared with an account directive ?
         (Account error checking)

       o Are all commodities declared with a commodity directive ?  (Commodity
         error checking)

       See also: https://hledger.org/checking-for-errors.html

       experimental.

TIME PERIODS
   Smart dates
       hledger's user interfaces accept a flexible "smart date" syntax.  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,   exact date, several separators allowed.   Year
       2004.9.1                   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, tomor-   -1, 0, 1 days from today
       row
       last/this/next             -1, 0, 1 periods from the current period
       day/week/month/quar-
       ter/year
       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  re-
       sults:

       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
       By default, most hledger reports will show the full span of time repre-
       sented by the journal data.  The report start date will be the earliest
       transaction or posting date, and the report end date will be the latest
       transaction, posting, or market price date.

       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:

       o As  in Ledger, end dates are exclusive, so you need to write the date
         after the last day you want to include.

       o As noted in reporting options: among start/end dates  specified  with
         options, the last (i.e.  right-most) option takes precedence.

       o 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 (.. can also  be  re-
                          placed with -)
       date:..12/1
       date:thismonth..
       date:thismonth

   Report intervals
       A report interval can be specified so that commands like register, bal-
       ance 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  com-
       plex  intervals  may be specified with a period expression.  Report in-
       tervals 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
       ".." or "-".  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; equiva-
                       lent   to   "2009/1/1   to
                       2009/2/1"
       -p "2009/1/1"   just  that day; equivalent
                       to "2009/1/1 to 2009/1/2"

       Or you can specify a single quarter like so:

       -p "2009Q1"   first  quarter  of   2009,
                     equivalent to "2009/1/1 to
                     2009/4/1"
       -p "q4"       fourth quarter of the cur-
                     rent year

       The  argument  of  -p can also begin with, or be, a report interval ex-
       pression.  The basic report intervals are daily, weekly, monthly, quar-
       terly,  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 ex-
       pression specifies different explicit start and end date.

       For example:

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

       The following more complex report intervals  are  also  supported:  bi-
       weekly,  fortnightly, bimonthly, every day|week|month|quarter|year, ev-
       ery 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 preceding Monday
       -p "every  5  month  from   periods  will have boundaries on 2009/03/01,
       2009/03"                    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     WEEKDAYNAME    (eg
       mon|tue|wed|thu|fri|sat|sun), every Nth day [of month], every Nth WEEK-
       DAYNAME [of month], every MM/DD [of year], every Nth MMM [of year], ev-
       ery MMM Nth [of year].

       Examples:

       -p  "every  2nd  day  of   periods will go from Tue to Tue
       week"
       -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
       With the --depth N option (short form: -N), commands like account, bal-
       ance 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 de-
       tail.  This flag has the same effect as a depth: query argument (so -2,
       --depth=2 or depth:2 are equivalent).

QUERIES
       One  of  hledger's strengths is being able to quickly report on precise
       subsets of your data.  Most commands accept an optional  query  expres-
       sion,  written  as arguments after the command name, to filter the data
       by date, account name or other criteria.  The syntax is  similar  to  a
       web search: one or more space-separated search terms, quotes to enclose
       whitespace, prefixes to match specific fields, a not: prefix to  negate
       the match.

       We  do  not yet support arbitrary boolean combinations of search terms;
       instead most commands show transactions/postings/accounts  which  match
       (or negatively match):

       o any of the description terms AND

       o any of the account terms AND

       o any of the status terms AND

       o all the other terms.

       The print command instead shows transactions which:

       o match any of the description terms AND

       o have any postings matching any of the positive account terms AND

       o have no postings matching any of the negative account terms AND

       o match all the other terms.

       The  following  kinds  of search terms can be used.  Remember these can
       also be prefixed with not:, eg to exclude a particular subaccount.

       REGEX, acct:REGEX
              match account names by this regular expression.  (With  no  pre-
              fix, acct: is assumed.)  same as above

       amt:N, amt:<N, amt:<=N, amt:>N, amt:>=N
              match  postings with a single-commodity amount that is equal to,
              less than, or greater than N.  (Multi-commodity amounts are  not
              tested, and will always match.) The comparison has two modes: if
              N is preceded by a + or - sign (or is 0), the two signed numbers
              are  compared.  Otherwise, the absolute magnitudes are compared,
              ignoring sign.

       code:REGEX
              match by transaction code (eg check number)

       cur:REGEX
              match postings or transactions including any amounts whose  cur-
              rency/commodity  symbol  is fully matched by REGEX.  (For a par-
              tial match, use .*REGEX.*).  Note, to match characters which are
              regex-significant, like the dollar sign ($), you need to prepend
              \.  And when using the command line you need  to  add  one  more
              level  of  quoting  to hide it from the shell, so eg do: hledger
              print cur:'\$' or hledger print cur:\\$.

       desc:REGEX
              match transaction descriptions.

       date:PERIODEXPR
              match dates within the specified period.  PERIODEXPR is a period
              expression  (with  no  report  interval).   Examples: date:2016,
              date:thismonth,  date:2000/2/1-2/15,  date:lastweek-.   If   the
              --date2  command  line  flag  is present, this matches secondary
              dates instead.

       date2:PERIODEXPR
              match secondary dates within the specified period.

       depth:N
              match (or display, depending on command) accounts  at  or  above
              this depth

       note:REGEX
              match  transaction  notes  (part  of  description right of |, or
              whole description when there's no |)

       payee:REGEX
              match transaction payee/payer names (part of description left of
              |, or whole description when there's no |)

       real:, real:0
              match real or virtual postings respectively

       status:, status:!, status:*
              match unmarked, pending, or cleared transactions respectively

       tag:REGEX[=REGEX]
              match  by  tag  name,  and optionally also by tag value.  Note a
              tag: query is considered to match a transaction  if  it  matches
              any  of  the  postings.  Also remember that postings inherit the
              tags of their parent transaction.

       The following special search term is used automatically in hledger-web,
       only:

       inacct:ACCTNAME
              tells  hledger-web to show the transaction register for this ac-
              count.  Can be filtered further with acct etc.

       Some of these can also be expressed as command-line options (eg depth:2
       is  equivalent  to --depth 2).  Generally you can mix options and query
       arguments, and the resulting query will be their intersection  (perhaps
       excluding the -p/--period option).

VALUATION
       Instead  of  reporting amounts in their original commodity, hledger can
       convert them to cost/sale amount (using the conversion rate recorded in
       the transaction), or to market value (using some market price on a cer-
       tain date).  This is controlled by the --value=TYPE[,COMMODITY] option,
       but  we  also  provide  the  simpler -B/-V/-X flags, and usually one of
       those is all you need.

   -B: Cost
       The -B/--cost flag converts amounts to their cost  or  sale  amount  at
       transaction time, if they have a transaction price specified.

   -V: Value
       The  -V/--market flag converts amounts to market value in their default
       valuation commodity, using the market prices in effect on the valuation
       date(s), if any.  More on these in a minute.

   -X: Value in specified commodity
       The -X/--exchange=COMM option is like -V, except you tell it which cur-
       rency you want to convert to, and it tries  to  convert  everything  to
       that.

   Valuation date
       Since  market  prices  can change from day to day, market value reports
       have a valuation date (or more than one), which determines which market
       prices will be used.

       For single period reports, if an explicit report end date is specified,
       that will be used as the valuation date; otherwise the  valuation  date
       is the journal's end date.

       For  multiperiod  reports, each column/period is valued on the last day
       of the period, by default.

   Market prices
       To convert a commodity A to its market value in  another  commodity  B,
       hledger  looks  for a suitable market price (exchange rate) as follows,
       in this order of preference :

       1. A declared market price or inferred market price: A's latest  market
          price in B on or before the valuation date as declared by a P direc-
          tive, or (with the --infer-value  flag)  inferred  from  transaction
          prices.

       2. A reverse market price: the inverse of a declared or inferred market
          price from B to A.

       3. A a forward chain of market prices: a synthetic price formed by com-
          bining the shortest chain of "forward" (only 1 above) market prices,
          leading from A to B.

       4. A any chain of market prices: a chain of any market prices,  includ-
          ing  both forward and reverse prices (1 and 2 above), leading from A
          to B.

       There is a limit to the  length  of  these  price  chains;  if  hledger
       reaches  that length without finding a complete chain or exhausting all
       possibilities, it will give up (with a "gave  up"  message  visible  in
       --debug=2 output).  That limit is currently 1000.

       Amounts  for  which no suitable market price can be found, are not con-
       verted.

   --infer-value: market prices from transactions
       Normally, market value in hledger is fully controlled by, and requires,
       P directives in your journal.  Since adding and updating those can be a
       chore, and since transactions usually take place  at  close  to  market
       value, why not use the recorded transaction prices as additional market
       prices (as Ledger does) ?  We could produce value reports without need-
       ing P directives at all.

       Adding  the  --infer-value  flag to -V, -X or --value enables this.  So
       for example, hledger bs -V --infer-value will get  market  prices  both
       from P directives and from transactions.

       There is a downside: value reports can sometimes be affected in confus-
       ing/undesired ways by your journal entries.  If this  happens  to  you,
       read all of this Valuation section carefully, and try adding --debug or
       --debug=2 to troubleshoot.

       --infer-value can infer market prices from:

       o multicommodity transactions with explicit prices (@/@@)

       o multicommodity transactions with implicit prices (no @, two  commodi-
         ties,  unbalanced).   (With  these,  the  order  of postings matters.
         hledger print -x can be useful for troubleshooting.)

       o but not, currently, from "more correct"  multicommodity  transactions
         (no @, multiple commodities, balanced).

   Valuation commodity
       When you specify a valuation commodity (-X COMM or --value TYPE,COMM):
       hledger  will convert all amounts to COMM, wherever it can find a suit-
       able market price (including by reversing or chaining prices).

       When you leave the  valuation  commodity  unspecified  (-V  or  --value
       TYPE):
       For  each  commodity  A, hledger picks a default valuation commodity as
       follows, in this order of preference:

       1. The price commodity from the latest P-declared market price for A on
          or before valuation date.

       2. The price commodity from the latest P-declared market price for A on
          any date.  (Allows conversion to proceed  when  there  are  inferred
          prices before the valuation date.)

       3. If  there are no P directives at all (any commodity or date) and the
          --infer-value flag is used: the  price  commodity  from  the  latest
          transaction-inferred price for A on or before valuation date.

       This means:

       o If  you  have  P directives, they determine which commodities -V will
         convert, and to what.

       o If you have no P directives, and use the --infer-value flag, transac-
         tion prices determine it.

       Amounts  for  which  no  valuation  commodity can be found are not con-
       verted.

   Simple valuation examples
       Here are some quick examples of -V:

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

              ; purchase some euros on nov 3
              2016/11/3
                  assets:euros        EUR100
                  assets:checking

              ; the euro is worth fewer dollars by dec 21
              P 2016/12/21 EUR $1.03

       How many euros do I have ?

              $ hledger -f t.j bal -N euros
                              EUR100  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

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

               --value=TYPE[,COMM]  TYPE is cost, then, 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 posting dates
                                    - 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

       The TYPE part selects cost or value and valuation date:

       --value=cost
              Convert  amounts  to cost, using the prices recorded in transac-
              tions.

       --value=then
              Convert amounts to their value in the default valuation  commod-
              ity, using market prices on each posting's date.

       --value=end
              Convert  amounts to their value in the default valuation commod-
              ity, using market prices on the last day of  the  report  period
              (or  if  unspecified, the journal's end date); or in multiperiod
              reports, market prices on the last day of each subperiod.

       --value=now
              Convert amounts to their value in the default valuation  commod-
              ity  using  current  market  prices (as of when report is gener-
              ated).

       --value=YYYY-MM-DD
              Convert amounts to their value in the default valuation  commod-
              ity using market prices on this date.

       To select a different valuation commodity, add the optional ,COMM part:
       a comma, then the  target  commodity's  symbol.   Eg:  --value=now,EUR.
       hledger will do its best to convert amounts to this commodity, deducing
       market prices as described above.

   More valuation examples
       Here are some examples showing the effect  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  re-
       verse 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 specify-
       ing a display style for A, 0.5A gets the default style, which shows  no
       decimal digits.  Because the displayed amount looks like zero, the com-
       modity symbol and minus sign are not displayed either.  Adding  a  com-
       modity 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 valuation on reports
       Here  is  a reference for how valuation is supposed to affect each part
       of hledger's reports (and a glossary).   (It's  wide,  you'll  have  to
       scroll  sideways.)  It may be useful when troubleshooting.  If you find
       problems, please report them, ideally with a reproducible example.  Re-
       lated: #329, #1083.

       Report      -B,            -V, -X         --value=then         --value=end    --value=DATE,
       type        --value=cost                                                      --value=now
       --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
       print
       posting     cost           value at re-   value at  posting    value at re-   value      at
       amounts                    port  end or   date                 port      or   DATE/today
                                  today                               journal end
       balance     unchanged      unchanged      unchanged            unchanged      unchanged
       asser-
       tions/as-
       signments

       register





       starting    cost           value at day   valued   at   day    value at day   value      at
       balance                    before   re-   each   historical    before   re-   DATE/today
       (-H)                       port      or   posting was made     port      or
                                  journal                             journal
                                  start                               start
       posting     cost           value at re-   value  at posting    value at re-   value      at
       amounts                    port end  or   date                 port      or   DATE/today
                                  today                               journal end
       summary     summarised     value at pe-   sum  of  postings    value at pe-   value      at
       posting     cost           riod ends      in interval, val-    riod ends      DATE/today
       amounts                                   ued  at  interval
       with  re-                                 start
       port  in-
       terval
       running     sum/average    sum/average    sum/average    of    sum/average    sum/average
       total/av-   of displayed   of displayed   displayed values     of displayed   of  displayed
       erage       values         values                              values         values

       balance
       (bs, bse,
       cf, is)
       balance     sums      of   value at re-   value at  posting    value at re-   value      at
       changes     costs          port  end or   date                 port      or   DATE/today of
                                  today     of                        journal  end   sums of post-
                                  sums      of                        of  sums  of   ings
                                  postings                            postings
       budget      like balance   like balance   like      balance    like    bal-   like  balance
       amounts     changes        changes        changes              ances          changes
       (--bud-
       get)
       grand to-   sum  of dis-   sum  of dis-   sum  of displayed    sum of  dis-   sum  of  dis-
       tal         played  val-   played  val-   valued               played  val-   played values
                   ues            ues                                 ues

       balance
       (bs, bse,
       cf,   is)
       with  re-
       port  in-
       terval
       starting    sums      of   value at re-   sums of values of    value at re-   sums of post-
       balances    costs     of   port   start   postings   before    port   start   ings   before
       (-H)        postings be-   of  sums  of   report  start  at    of  sums  of   report start
                   fore  report   all postings   respective  post-    all postings
                   start          before   re-   ing dates            before   re-
                                  port start                          port start
       balance     sums      of   same      as   sums of values of    balance        value      at
       changes     costs     of   --value=end    postings  in  pe-    change    in   DATE/today of
       (bal, is,   postings  in                  riod  at  respec-    each period,   sums of post-
       bs          period                        tive      posting    valued    at   ings
       --change,                                 dates                period ends
       cf
       --change)
       end  bal-   sums      of   same      as   sums of values of    period   end   value      at
       ances       costs     of   --value=end    postings from be-    balances,      DATE/today of
       (bal  -H,   postings                      fore period start    valued    at   sums of post-
       is   --H,   from  before                  to  period end at    period ends    ings
       bs, cf)     report start                  respective  post-
                   to    period                  ing dates
                   end
       budget      like balance   like balance   like      balance    like    bal-   like  balance
       amounts     changes/end    changes/end    changes/end  bal-    ances          changes/end
       (--bud-     balances       balances       ances                               balances
       get)
       row   to-   sums,  aver-   sums,  aver-   sums, averages of    sums,  aver-   sums,   aver-
       tals, row   ages of dis-   ages of dis-   displayed values     ages of dis-   ages  of dis-
       averages    played  val-   played  val-                        played  val-   played values
       (-T, -A)    ues            ues                                 ues
       column      sums of dis-   sums of dis-   sums of displayed    sums of dis-   sums of  dis-
       totals      played  val-   played  val-   values               played  val-   played values
                   ues            ues                                 ues




       grand to-   sum, average   sum, average   sum,  average  of    sum, average   sum,  average
       tal,        of    column   of    column   column totals        of    column   of column to-
       grand av-   totals         totals                              totals         tals
       erage


       --cumulative is omitted to save space, it works like -H but with a zero
       starting balance.

       Glossary:

       cost   calculated using price(s) recorded in the transaction(s).

       value  market value using available market price declarations,  or  the
              unchanged amount if no conversion rate can be found.

       report start
              the  first  day  of the report period specified with -b or -p or
              date:, otherwise today.

       report or journal start
              the first day of the report period specified with -b  or  -p  or
              date:,  otherwise  the earliest transaction date in the journal,
              otherwise today.

       report end
              the last day of the report period specified with  -e  or  -p  or
              date:, otherwise today.

       report or journal end
              the  last  day  of  the report period specified with -e or -p or
              date:, otherwise the latest transaction  date  in  the  journal,
              otherwise today.

       report interval
              a  flag (-D/-W/-M/-Q/-Y) or period expression that activates the
              report's multi-period mode (whether showing one or many subperi-
              ods).

PIVOTING
       Normally hledger sums amounts, and organizes them in a hierarchy, based
       on account name.  The --pivot FIELD option causes it to sum  and  orga-
       nize  hierarchy  based on the value of some other field instead.  FIELD
       can be: code, description, payee, note, or the full name (case insensi-
       tive) of any tag.  As with account names, values containing colon:sepa-
       rated: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,  de-
       scribed 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

OUTPUT
   Output destination
       hledger commands send their output to the terminal by default.  You can
       of course redirect this, eg into a file, using standard shell syntax:

              $ hledger print > foo.txt

       Some  commands (print, register, stats, the balance commands) also pro-
       vide the -o/--output-file option, which does  the  same  thing  without
       needing the shell.  Eg:

              $ hledger print -o foo.txt
              $ hledger print -o -        # write to stdout (the default)

   Output format
       Some commands (print, register, the balance commands) offer a choice of
       output format.  In addition to the usual plain text format (txt), there
       are  CSV  (csv),  HTML (html), JSON (json) and SQL (sql).  This is con-
       trolled by the -O/--output-format option:

              $ hledger print -O csv

       or, by a file extension specified with -o/--output-file:

              $ hledger balancesheet -o foo.html   # write HTML to foo.html

       The -O option can be used to override the file extension if needed:

              $ hledger balancesheet -o foo.txt -O html   # write HTML to foo.txt

       Some notes about JSON output:

       o This feature is marked experimental,  and  not  yet  much  used;  you
         should expect our JSON to evolve.  Real-world feedback is welcome.

       o Our  JSON is rather large and verbose, as it is quite a faithful rep-
         resentation of hledger's internal  data  types.   To  understand  the
         JSON,  read  the  Haskell  type  definitions,  which  are  mostly  in
         https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/blob/master/hledger-
         lib/Hledger/Data/Types.hs.

       o hledger  represents  quantities  as  Decimal values storing up to 255
         significant digits, eg for  repeating  decimals.   Such  numbers  can
         arise in practice (from automatically-calculated transaction prices),
         and would break most JSON consumers.  So in JSON, we show  quantities
         as simple Numbers with at most 10 decimal places.  We don't limit the
         number of integer digits, but that part is under  your  control.   We
         hope  this  approach will not cause problems in practice; if you find
         otherwise, please let us know.  (Cf #1195)

       Notes about SQL output:

       o SQL output is also marked experimental, and much like JSON could  use
         real-world feedback.

       o SQL output is expected to work with sqlite, MySQL and PostgreSQL

       o SQL  output  is structured with the expectations that statements will
         be executed in the empty database.  If you already have  tables  cre-
         ated  via  SQL  output  of hledger, you would probably want to either
         clear tables of existing data (via delete or truncate SQL statements)
         or drop tables completely as otherwise your postings will be duped.

COMMANDS
       hledger  provides a number of commands for producing reports and manag-
       ing your data.  Run hledger with no  arguments  to  list  the  commands
       available,  and hledger CMD to run a command.  CMD can be the full com-
       mand name, or its standard abbreviation shown in the commands list,  or
       any unambiguous prefix of the name.  Eg: hledger bal.

       Here are the built-in commands, with the most often-used in bold:

       Data entry:

       These data entry commands are the only ones which can modify your jour-
       nal file.

       o add - add transactions using guided prompts

       o import - add any new transactions from other files (eg csv)

       Data management:

       o check - check for various kinds of issue in the data

       o close (equity) - generate balance-resetting transactions

       o diff - compare account transactions in two journal files

       o rewrite - generate extra postings, similar to print --auto

       Financial statements:

       o aregister (areg) - show transactions in a particular account

       o balancesheet (bs) - show assets, liabilities and net worth

       o balancesheetequity (bse) - show assets, liabilities and equity

       o cashflow (cf) - show changes in liquid assets

       o incomestatement (is) - show revenues and expenses

       o roi - show return on investments

       Miscellaneous reports:

       o accounts - show account names

       o activity - show postings-per-interval bar charts

       o balance (bal) - show balance changes/end balances/budgets in any  ac-
         counts

       o codes - show transaction codes

       o commodities - show commodity/currency symbols

       o descriptions - show unique transaction descriptions

       o files - show input file paths

       o help - show hledger user manuals in several formats

       o notes - show unique note segments of transaction descriptions

       o payees - show unique payee segments of transaction descriptions

       o prices - show market price records

       o print - show transactions (journal entries)

       o print-unique - show only transactions with unique descriptions

       o register  (reg) - show postings in one or more accounts & running to-
         tal

       o register-match - show a recent posting that best matches  a  descrip-
         tion

       o stats - show journal statistics

       o tags - show tag names

       o test - run self tests

       Add-on commands:

       Programs  or  scripts  named  hledger-SOMETHING in your PATH are add-on
       commands; these appear in the commands list with  a  +  mark.   Two  of
       these are maintained and released with hledger:

       o ui - an efficient terminal interface (TUI) for hledger

       o web - a simple web interface (WUI) for hledger

       And these add-ons are maintained separately:

       o iadd - a more interactive alternative for the add command

       o interest  -  generates  interest  transactions  according  to various
         schemes

       o stockquotes - downloads market prices for your commodities  from  Al-
         phaVantage (experimental)

       Next, the detailed command docs, in alphabetical order.

   accounts
       accounts
       Show account names.

       This  command  lists account names, either declared with account direc-
       tives (--declared), posted to (--used), or both  (the  default).   With
       query  arguments,  only  matched account names and account names refer-
       enced by matched postings are shown.  It shows a flat list by  default.
       With  --tree,  it  uses  indentation to show the account hierarchy.  In
       flat mode you can add --drop N to omit the first few account name  com-
       ponents.   Account names can be depth-clipped with depth:N or --depth N
       or -N.

       Examples:

              $ hledger accounts
              assets:bank:checking
              assets:bank:saving
              assets:cash
              expenses:food
              expenses:supplies
              income:gifts
              income:salary
              liabilities:debts

   activity
       activity
       Show an ascii barchart of posting counts per interval.

       The activity command displays an ascii  histogram  showing  transaction
       counts  by  day, week, month or other reporting interval (by day is the
       default).  With query arguments, it counts only matched transactions.

       Examples:

              $ hledger activity --quarterly
              2008-01-01 **
              2008-04-01 *******
              2008-07-01
              2008-10-01 **

   add
       add
       Prompt for transactions and add them to  the  journal.   Any  arguments
       will be used as default inputs for the first N prompts.

       Many  hledger users edit their journals directly with a text editor, or
       generate them from CSV.  For more interactive data entry, there is  the
       add  command, which prompts interactively on the console for new trans-
       actions, and appends them to the journal file (if there are multiple -f
       FILE  options,  the  first file is used.) Existing transactions are not
       changed.  This is the only hledger command that writes to  the  journal
       file.

       To use it, just run hledger add and follow the prompts.  You can add as
       many transactions as you like; when you are finished, enter . or  press
       control-d or control-c to exit.

       Features:

       o add  tries to provide useful defaults, using the most similar (by de-
         scription) recent transaction (filtered by the query, if  any)  as  a
         template.

       o You can also set the initial defaults with command line arguments.

       o Readline-style edit keys can be used during data entry.

       o The tab key will auto-complete whenever possible - accounts, descrip-
         tions, dates (yesterday, today, tomorrow).   If  the  input  area  is
         empty, it will insert the default value.

       o If  the  journal defines a default commodity, it will be added to any
         bare numbers entered.

       o A parenthesised transaction code may be entered following a date.

       o Comments and tags may be entered following a description or amount.

       o If you make a mistake, enter < at any prompt to go one step backward.

       o Input prompts are displayed in a different colour when  the  terminal
         supports it.

       Example (see the tutorial for a detailed explanation):

              $ hledger add
              Adding transactions to journal file /src/hledger/examples/sample.journal
              Any command line arguments will be used as defaults.
              Use tab key to complete, readline keys to edit, enter to accept defaults.
              An optional (CODE) may follow transaction dates.
              An optional ; COMMENT may follow descriptions or amounts.
              If you make a mistake, enter < at any prompt to go one step backward.
              To end a transaction, enter . when prompted.
              To quit, enter . at a date prompt or press control-d or control-c.
              Date [2015/05/22]:
              Description: supermarket
              Account 1: expenses:food
              Amount  1: $10
              Account 2: assets:checking
              Amount  2 [$-10.0]:
              Account 3 (or . or enter to finish this transaction): .
              2015/05/22 supermarket
                  expenses:food             $10
                  assets:checking        $-10.0

              Save this transaction to the journal ? [y]:
              Saved.
              Starting the next transaction (. or ctrl-D/ctrl-C to quit)
              Date [2015/05/22]: <CTRL-D> $

       On  Microsoft  Windows,  the add command makes sure that no part of the
       file path ends with a period, as that would cause problems (#1056).

   aregister
       aregister, areg
       Show transactions affecting a particular  account,  and  the  account's
       running balance.

       aregister  shows  the  transactions affecting a particular account (and
       its subaccounts), from the point of view of that  account.   Each  line
       shows:

       o the transaction's (or posting's, see below) date

       o the names of the other account(s) involved

       o the net change to this account's balance

       o the  account's  historical  running  balance  (including balance from
         transactions before the report start date).

       With aregister, each line  represents  a  whole  transaction  -  as  in
       hledger-ui,  hledger-web,  and  your  bank statement.  By contrast, the
       register command shows individual postings, across all  accounts.   You
       might  prefer aregister for reconciling with real-world asset/liability
       accounts, and register for reviewing detailed revenues/expenses.

       An account must be specified as the first argument, which should be the
       full  account name or an account pattern (regular expression).  aregis-
       ter will show transactions in this account (the first one matched)  and
       any of its subaccounts.

       Any  additional  arguments  form a query which will filter the transac-
       tions shown.

       Transactions making a net change of zero are not shown by default;  add
       the -E/--empty flag to show them.

       This command also supports the output destination and output format op-
       tions The output formats supported are txt, csv, and json.

   aregister and custom posting dates
       Transactions whose date is outside  the  report  period  can  still  be
       shown,  if  they have a posting to this account dated inside the report
       period.  (And in this case it's the posting date that is  shown.)  This
       ensures that aregister can show an accurate historical running balance,
       matching the one shown by register -H with the same arguments.

       To filter strictly by transaction date  instead,  add  the  --txn-dates
       flag.   If  you  use  this  flag  and some of your postings have custom
       dates, it's probably best to assume the running balance is wrong.

       Examples:

       Show all transactions and historical running balance in the  first  ac-
       count whose name contains "checking":

              $ hledger areg checking

       Show  transactions and historical running balance in all asset accounts
       during july:

              $ hledger areg assets date:jul

   balance
       balance, bal
       Show accounts and their balances.

       The balance command is hledger's most versatile command.  Note, despite
       the  name,  it  is  not always used for showing real-world account bal-
       ances; the more accounting-aware balancesheet and  incomestatement  may
       be more convenient for that.

       By default, it displays all accounts, and each account's change in bal-
       ance during the entire period of the journal.  Balance changes are cal-
       culated  by  adding up the postings in each account.  You can limit the
       postings matched, by a query, to see fewer  accounts,  changes  over  a
       different time period, changes from only cleared transactions, etc.

       If you include an account's complete history of postings in the report,
       the balance change is equivalent to the account's current  ending  bal-
       ance.   For a real-world account, typically you won't have all transac-
       tions in the journal; instead you'll have all transactions after a cer-
       tain  date,  and  an "opening balances" transaction setting the correct
       starting balance on that date.  Then  the  balance  command  will  show
       real-world account balances.  In some cases the -H/--historical flag is
       used to ensure this (more below).

       This command also supports the output destination and output format op-
       tions The output formats supported are (in most modes): txt, csv, html,
       and json.

       The balance command can produce several styles of report:

   Single-period flat balance report
       This is the default for hledger's balance command: a flat list  of  all
       (or  with  a query, matched) accounts, showing full account names.  Ac-
       counts are sorted by declaration order if  any,  and  then  by  account
       name.  Accounts which have zero balance are not shown unless -E/--empty
       is used.  The reported balances' total is shown as the last  line,  un-
       less disabled by -N/--no-total.

              $ hledger bal
                                $1  assets:bank:saving
                               $-2  assets:cash
                                $1  expenses:food
                                $1  expenses:supplies
                               $-1  income:gifts
                               $-1  income:salary
                                $1  liabilities:debts
              --------------------
                                 0

   Single-period tree-mode balance report
       With the -t/--tree flag, accounts are displayed hierarchically, showing
       subaccounts as short names indented below their parent.  (This  is  the
       default style in Ledger and in older hledger versions.)

              $ hledger balance
                               $-1  assets
                                $1    bank:saving
                               $-2    cash
                                $2  expenses
                                $1    food
                                $1    supplies
                               $-2  income
                               $-1    gifts
                               $-1    salary
                                $1  liabilities:debts
              --------------------
                                 0

       For  more  compact output, "boring" accounts containing a single inter-
       esting subaccount and no balance of their own (assets:bank and liabili-
       ties  here)  are  elided  into the following line, unless --no-elide is
       used.  And accounts which have zero balance and no non-zero subaccounts
       are omitted, unless -E/--empty is used.

       Account  balances  in tree mode are "inclusive" - they include the bal-
       ances of any subaccounts.  Eg, the assets $-1 balance here includes the
       $1 from assets:bank:saving and the $-2 from assets:cash.  (And it would
       include balance posted to the assets account itself, if there was any).
       Note this causes some repetition, and the final total (0) is the sum of
       the top-level balances, not of all the balances shown.

       Each group of sibling accounts is sorted separately, by declaration or-
       der and then by account name.

   Customising single-period balance reports
       You  can  customise  the  layout  of single-period balance reports with
       --format FMT, which sets the format of each line.  Eg:

              $ hledger balance --format "%20(account) %12(total)"
                            assets          $-1
                       bank:saving           $1
                              cash          $-2
                          expenses           $2
                              food           $1
                          supplies           $1
                            income          $-2
                             gifts          $-1
                            salary          $-1
                 liabilities:debts           $1
              ---------------------------------
                                              0

       The FMT format string (plus a newline) specifies the formatting applied
       to  each  account/balance pair.  It may contain any suitable text, with
       data fields interpolated like so:

       %[MIN][.MAX](FIELDNAME)

       o MIN pads with spaces to at least this width (optional)

       o MAX truncates at this width (optional)

       o FIELDNAME must be enclosed in parentheses, and can be one of:

         o depth_spacer - a number of spaces equal to the account's depth,  or
           if MIN is specified, MIN * depth spaces.

         o account - the account's name

         o total - the account's balance/posted total, right justified

       Also,  FMT  can begin with an optional prefix to control how multi-com-
       modity amounts are rendered:

       o %_ - render on multiple lines, bottom-aligned (the default)

       o %^ - render on multiple lines, top-aligned

       o %, - render on one line, comma-separated

       There are some quirks.  Eg in one-line mode, %(depth_spacer) has no ef-
       fect, instead %(account) has indentation built in.  Experimentation may
       be needed to get pleasing results.

       Some example formats:

       o %(total) - the account's total

       o %-20.20(account) - the account's name, left justified, padded  to  20
         characters and clipped at 20 characters

       o %,%-50(account)   %25(total)  - account name padded to 50 characters,
         total padded to 20 characters, with multiple commodities rendered  on
         one line

       o %20(total)   %2(depth_spacer)%-(account) - the default format for the
         single-column balance report

   Depth limiting
       With a depth:N query, or --depth N option, or just -N, balance  reports
       will show accounts only to the specified depth.  This is very useful to
       hide low-level accounts and get an overview.  Eg, limiting to  depth  1
       shows the top-level accounts:

              $ hledger balance -N -1
                               $-1  assets
                                $2  expenses
                               $-2  income
                                $1  liabilities

       Accounts  at  the  depth  limit will include the balances of any hidden
       subaccounts (even in flat mode, which  normally  shows  exclusive  bal-
       ances).

       You  can  also  drop  account name components from the start of account
       names, using --drop N.  This can be useful to hide  unwanted  top-level
       detail.

   Colour support
       In  terminal  output, when colour is enabled, the balance command shows
       negative amounts in red.

   Sorting by amount
       With -S/--sort-amount, accounts with the largest (most  positive)  bal-
       ances  are  shown  first.  For example, hledger bal expenses -MAS shows
       your biggest averaged monthly expenses first.

       Revenues and liability balances are typically negative, however, so  -S
       shows  these  in reverse order.  To work around this, you can add --in-
       vert to flip the signs.  Or, use one of the sign-flipping reports  like
       balancesheet or incomestatement, which also support -S.  Eg: hledger is
       -MAS.

   Percentages
       With -% or --percent, balance reports show  each  account's  value  ex-
       pressed  as  a percentage of the column's total.  This is useful to get
       an overview of the relative sizes of account balances.  For example  to
       obtain an overview of expenses:

              $ hledger balance expenses -%
                           100.0 %  expenses
                            50.0 %    food
                            50.0 %    supplies
              --------------------
                           100.0 %

       Note  that  --tree  does not have an effect on -%.  The percentages are
       always relative to the total sum of each column, they are  never  rela-
       tive to the parent account.

       Since  the  percentages  are relative to the columns sum, it is usually
       not useful to calculate percentages if the signs  of  the  amounts  are
       mixed.   Although  the  results  are technically correct, they are most
       likely useless.  Especially in a balance report that sums  up  to  zero
       (eg hledger balance -B) all percentage values will be zero.

       This  flag does not work if the report contains any mixed commodity ac-
       counts.  If there are mixed commodity accounts in the report be sure to
       use -V or -B to coerce the report into using a single commodity.

   Multi-period balance report
       Multi-period  balance  reports are a very useful hledger feature, acti-
       vated if you provide one of  the  reporting  interval  flags,  such  as
       -M/--monthly.   They  are similar to single-period balance reports, but
       they show the report as a table, with columns representing one or  more
       successive  time  periods.   This is the usually the preferred style of
       balance report in hledger (even for a single period).

       Multi-period balance reports come in several types,  showing  different
       information:

       1. A  balance  change  report: by default, each column shows the sum of
          postings in that period, ie the account's change of balance in  that
          period.  This is useful eg for a monthly income statement:

          $ hledger balance --quarterly income expenses -E
          Balance changes in 2008:

                             ||  2008q1  2008q2  2008q3  2008q4
          ===================++=================================
           expenses:food     ||       0      $1       0       0
           expenses:supplies ||       0      $1       0       0
           income:gifts      ||       0     $-1       0       0
           income:salary     ||     $-1       0       0       0
          -------------------++---------------------------------
                             ||     $-1      $1       0       0

       2. A  cumulative  end  balance  report:  with --cumulative, each column
          shows the end balance for  that  period,  accumulating  the  changes
          across periods, starting from 0 at the report start date:

                  $ hledger balance --quarterly income expenses -E --cumulative
                  Ending balances (cumulative) in 2008:

                                     ||  2008/03/31  2008/06/30  2008/09/30  2008/12/31
                  ===================++=================================================
                   expenses:food     ||           0          $1          $1          $1
                   expenses:supplies ||           0          $1          $1          $1
                   income:gifts      ||           0         $-1         $-1         $-1
                   income:salary     ||         $-1         $-1         $-1         $-1
                  -------------------++-------------------------------------------------
                                     ||         $-1           0           0           0

       3. A  historical  end balance report: with --historical/-H, each column
          shows the actual historical end balance for that period,  accumulat-
          ing  the  changes across periods, and including the balance from any
          postings before the report start date.  This  is  useful  eg  for  a
          multi-period  balance  sheet, and when you want to see balances only
          after a certain date:

                  $ hledger balance ^assets ^liabilities --quarterly --historical --begin 2008/4/1
                  Ending balances (historical) in 2008/04/01-2008/12/31:

                                        ||  2008/06/30  2008/09/30  2008/12/31
                  ======================++=====================================
                   assets:bank:checking ||          $1          $1           0
                   assets:bank:saving   ||          $1          $1          $1
                   assets:cash          ||         $-2         $-2         $-2
                   liabilities:debts    ||           0           0          $1
                  ----------------------++-------------------------------------
                                        ||           0           0           0

       Note that --cumulative or --historical/-H disable --row-total/-T, since
       summing end balances generally does not make sense.

       With   a  reporting  interval  (like  --quarterly  above),  the  report
       start/end dates will be adjusted if necessary so  that  they  encompass
       the displayed report periods.  This is so that the first and last peri-
       ods will be "full" and comparable to the others.

       The -E/--empty flag does two things  in  multicolumn  balance  reports:
       first, the report will show all columns within the specified report pe-
       riod (without -E, leading and trailing columns with all zeroes are  not
       shown).   Second,  all  accounts which existed at the report start date
       will be considered, not just the ones with activity during  the  report
       period  (use  -E to include low-activity accounts which would otherwise
       would be omitted).

       The -T/--row-total flag adds an additional column showing the total for
       each row.

       The  -A/--average  flag adds a column showing the average value in each
       row.

       Here's an example of all three:

              $ hledger balance -Q income expenses --tree -ETA
              Balance changes in 2008:

                          ||  2008q1  2008q2  2008q3  2008q4    Total  Average
              ============++===================================================
               expenses   ||       0      $2       0       0       $2       $1
                 food     ||       0      $1       0       0       $1        0
                 supplies ||       0      $1       0       0       $1        0
               income     ||     $-1     $-1       0       0      $-2      $-1
                 gifts    ||       0     $-1       0       0      $-1        0
                 salary   ||     $-1       0       0       0      $-1        0
              ------------++---------------------------------------------------
                          ||     $-1      $1       0       0        0        0

              (Average is rounded to the dollar here since all journal amounts are)

       The --transpose flag can be used to exchange the rows and columns of  a
       multicolumn report.

       When  showing  multicommodity amounts, multicolumn balance reports will
       elide any amounts which have more than two commodities, since otherwise
       columns  could get very wide.  The --no-elide flag disables this.  Hid-
       ing totals with the -N/--no-total flag can also help reduce  the  width
       of multicommodity reports.

       When the report is still too wide, a good workaround is to pipe it into
       less -RS (-R for colour, -S to chop long lines).  Eg:  hledger  bal  -D
       --color=yes | less -RS.

   Budget report
       With  --budget,  extra  columns  are displayed showing budget goals for
       each account and period, if any.  Budget goals are defined by  periodic
       transactions.  This is very useful for comparing planned and actual in-
       come, expenses, time usage, etc.  --budget is most often combined  with
       a report interval.

       For  example,  you  can take average monthly expenses in the common ex-
       pense categories to construct a minimal monthly budget:

              ;; Budget
              ~ monthly
                income  $2000
                expenses:food    $400
                expenses:bus     $50
                expenses:movies  $30
                assets:bank:checking

              ;; Two months worth of expenses
              2017-11-01
                income  $1950
                expenses:food    $396
                expenses:bus     $49
                expenses:movies  $30
                expenses:supplies  $20
                assets:bank:checking

              2017-12-01
                income  $2100
                expenses:food    $412
                expenses:bus     $53
                expenses:gifts   $100
                assets:bank:checking

       You can now see a monthly budget report:

              $ hledger balance -M --budget
              Budget performance in 2017/11/01-2017/12/31:

                                    ||                      Nov                       Dec
              ======================++====================================================
               assets               || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-2665 [ 107% of $-2480]
               assets:bank          || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-2665 [ 107% of $-2480]
               assets:bank:checking || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-2665 [ 107% of $-2480]
               expenses             ||   $495 [ 103% of   $480]    $565 [ 118% of   $480]
               expenses:bus         ||    $49 [  98% of    $50]     $53 [ 106% of    $50]
               expenses:food        ||   $396 [  99% of   $400]    $412 [ 103% of   $400]
               expenses:movies      ||    $30 [ 100% of    $30]       0 [   0% of    $30]
               income               ||  $1950 [  98% of  $2000]   $2100 [ 105% of  $2000]
              ----------------------++----------------------------------------------------
                                    ||      0 [              0]       0 [              0]

       This is different from a normal balance report in several ways:

       o Only accounts with budget goals during the report period  are  shown,
         by default.

       o In  each  column,  in square brackets after the actual amount, budget
         goal amounts are shown, and the actual/goal percentage.  (Note:  bud-
         get goals should be in the same commodity as the actual amount.)

       o All  parent accounts are always shown, even in flat mode.  Eg assets,
         assets:bank, and expenses above.

       o Amounts always include all subaccounts, budgeted or unbudgeted,  even
         in flat mode.

       This means that the numbers displayed will not always add up! Eg above,
       the expenses actual amount includes the  gifts  and  supplies  transac-
       tions,  but  the  expenses:gifts and expenses:supplies accounts are not
       shown, as they have no budget amounts declared.

       This can be confusing.  When you need to make things clearer,  use  the
       -E/--empty  flag,  which  will reveal all accounts including unbudgeted
       ones, giving the full picture.  Eg:

              $ hledger balance -M --budget --empty
              Budget performance in 2017/11/01-2017/12/31:

                                    ||                      Nov                       Dec
              ======================++====================================================
               assets               || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-2665 [ 107% of $-2480]
               assets:bank          || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-2665 [ 107% of $-2480]
               assets:bank:checking || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-2665 [ 107% of $-2480]
               expenses             ||   $495 [ 103% of   $480]    $565 [ 118% of   $480]
               expenses:bus         ||    $49 [  98% of    $50]     $53 [ 106% of    $50]
               expenses:food        ||   $396 [  99% of   $400]    $412 [ 103% of   $400]
               expenses:gifts       ||      0                      $100
               expenses:movies      ||    $30 [ 100% of    $30]       0 [   0% of    $30]
               expenses:supplies    ||    $20                         0
               income               ||  $1950 [  98% of  $2000]   $2100 [ 105% of  $2000]
              ----------------------++----------------------------------------------------
                                    ||      0 [              0]       0 [              0]

       You can roll over unspent budgets to next period with --cumulative:

              $ hledger balance -M --budget --cumulative
              Budget performance in 2017/11/01-2017/12/31:

                                    ||                      Nov                       Dec
              ======================++====================================================
               assets               || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-5110 [ 103% of $-4960]
               assets:bank          || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-5110 [ 103% of $-4960]
               assets:bank:checking || $-2445 [  99% of $-2480]  $-5110 [ 103% of $-4960]
               expenses             ||   $495 [ 103% of   $480]   $1060 [ 110% of   $960]
               expenses:bus         ||    $49 [  98% of    $50]    $102 [ 102% of   $100]
               expenses:food        ||   $396 [  99% of   $400]    $808 [ 101% of   $800]
               expenses:movies      ||    $30 [ 100% of    $30]     $30 [  50% of    $60]
               income               ||  $1950 [  98% of  $2000]   $4050 [ 101% of  $4000]
              ----------------------++----------------------------------------------------
                                    ||      0 [              0]       0 [              0]

       For more examples and notes, see Budgeting.

   Budget report start date
       This might be a bug, but for now: when making budget  reports,  it's  a
       good idea to explicitly set the report's start date to the first day of
       a reporting period, because a periodic rule like  ~  monthly  generates
       its  transactions  on the 1st of each month, and if your journal has no
       regular transactions on the 1st, the default report  start  date  could
       exclude  that  budget  goal, which can be a little surprising.  Eg here
       the default report period is just the day of 2020-01-15:

              ~ monthly in 2020
                (expenses:food)  $500

              2020-01-15
                expenses:food    $400
                assets:checking

              $ hledger bal expenses --budget
              Budget performance in 2020-01-15:

                            || 2020-01-15
              ==============++============
               <unbudgeted> ||       $400
              --------------++------------
                            ||       $400

       To avoid this, specify the budget report's  period,  or  at  least  the
       start  date, with -b/-e/-p/date:, to ensure it includes the budget goal
       transactions (periodic transactions) that  you  want.   Eg,  adding  -b
       2020/1/1 to the above:

              $ hledger bal expenses --budget -b 2020/1/1
              Budget performance in 2020-01-01..2020-01-15:

                             || 2020-01-01..2020-01-15
              ===============++========================
               expenses:food ||     $400 [80% of $500]
              ---------------++------------------------
                             ||     $400 [80% of $500]

   Nested budgets
       You  can  add budgets to any account in your account hierarchy.  If you
       have budgets on both parent account and some of its children, then bud-
       get(s)  of  the  child account(s) would be added to the budget of their
       parent, much like account balances behave.

       In the most simple case this means that once you add a  budget  to  any
       account, all its parents would have budget as well.

       To illustrate this, consider the following budget:

              ~ monthly from 2019/01
                  expenses:personal             $1,000.00
                  expenses:personal:electronics    $100.00
                  liabilities

       With  this,  monthly  budget  for electronics is defined to be $100 and
       budget for personal expenses is an additional $1000,  which  implicitly
       means that budget for both expenses:personal and expenses is $1100.

       Transactions  in expenses:personal:electronics will be counted both to-
       wards its $100 budget and $1100 of expenses:personal , and transactions
       in  any  other subaccount of expenses:personal would be counted towards
       only towards the budget of expenses:personal.

       For example, let's consider these transactions:

              ~ monthly from 2019/01
                  expenses:personal             $1,000.00
                  expenses:personal:electronics    $100.00
                  liabilities

              2019/01/01 Google home hub
                  expenses:personal:electronics          $90.00
                  liabilities                           $-90.00

              2019/01/02 Phone screen protector
                  expenses:personal:electronics:upgrades          $10.00
                  liabilities

              2019/01/02 Weekly train ticket
                  expenses:personal:train tickets       $153.00
                  liabilities

              2019/01/03 Flowers
                  expenses:personal          $30.00
                  liabilities

       As you can see, we  have  transactions  in  expenses:personal:electron-
       ics:upgrades  and  expenses:personal:train  tickets,  and since both of
       these accounts are without explicitly defined  budget,  these  transac-
       tions would be counted towards budgets of expenses:personal:electronics
       and expenses:personal accordingly:

              $ hledger balance --budget -M
              Budget performance in 2019/01:

                                             ||                           Jan
              ===============================++===============================
               expenses                      ||  $283.00 [  26% of  $1100.00]
               expenses:personal             ||  $283.00 [  26% of  $1100.00]
               expenses:personal:electronics ||  $100.00 [ 100% of   $100.00]
               liabilities                   || $-283.00 [  26% of $-1100.00]
              -------------------------------++-------------------------------
                                             ||        0 [                 0]

       And with --empty, we can get a better picture of budget allocation  and
       consumption:

              $ hledger balance --budget -M --empty
              Budget performance in 2019/01:

                                                      ||                           Jan
              ========================================++===============================
               expenses                               ||  $283.00 [  26% of  $1100.00]
               expenses:personal                      ||  $283.00 [  26% of  $1100.00]
               expenses:personal:electronics          ||  $100.00 [ 100% of   $100.00]
               expenses:personal:electronics:upgrades ||   $10.00
               expenses:personal:train tickets        ||  $153.00
               liabilities                            || $-283.00 [  26% of $-1100.00]
              ----------------------------------------++-------------------------------
                                                      ||        0 [                 0]

   balancesheet
       balancesheet, bs
       This  command  displays a balance sheet, showing historical ending bal-
       ances of asset and liability accounts.  (To see equity as well, use the
       balancesheetequity  command.)  Amounts  are  shown with normal positive
       sign, as in conventional financial statements.

       The asset and liability accounts shown are those accounts declared with
       the  Asset or Cash or Liability type, or otherwise all accounts under a
       top-level asset or liability account  (case  insensitive,  plurals  al-
       lowed).

       (This  report  is  essentially similar to "hledger balance --historical
       assets liabilities", with liabilities sign-flipped.)

       Example:

              $ hledger balancesheet
              Balance Sheet

              Assets:
                               $-1  assets
                                $1    bank:saving
                               $-2    cash
              --------------------
                               $-1

              Liabilities:
                                $1  liabilities:debts
              --------------------
                                $1

              Total:
              --------------------
                                 0

       With a reporting interval, multiple columns will be shown, one for each
       report  period.  As with multicolumn balance reports, you can alter the
       report mode  with  --change/--cumulative/--historical.   Normally  bal-
       ancesheet  shows historical ending balances, which is what you need for
       a balance sheet; note this means it ignores  report  begin  dates  (and
       -T/--row-total,  since  summing  end  balances  generally does not make
       sense).  Instead of absolute values percentages can be  displayed  with
       -%.

       This command also supports the output destination and output format op-
       tions The output formats supported are txt, csv, html, and  (experimen-
       tal) json.

   balancesheetequity
       balancesheetequity, bse
       This  command  displays a balance sheet, showing historical ending bal-
       ances of asset, liability and equity accounts.  Amounts are shown  with
       normal positive sign, as in conventional financial statements.

       The  asset,  liability and equity accounts shown are those accounts de-
       clared with the Asset, Cash, Liability or Equity type, or otherwise all
       accounts under a top-level asset, liability or equity account (case in-
       sensitive, plurals allowed).

       (This report is essentially similar to  "hledger  balance  --historical
       assets liabilities equity", with liabilities and equity sign-flipped.)

       Example:

              $ hledger balancesheetequity
              Balance Sheet With Equity

              Assets:
                               $-2  assets
                                $1    bank:saving
                               $-3    cash
              --------------------
                               $-2

              Liabilities:
                                $1  liabilities:debts
              --------------------
                                $1

              Equity:
                        $1  equity:owner
              --------------------
                        $1

              Total:
              --------------------
                                 0

       This command also supports the output destination and output format op-
       tions The output formats supported are txt, csv, html, and  (experimen-
       tal) json.

   cashflow
       cashflow, cf
       This  command  displays  a  cashflow statement, showing the inflows and
       outflows affecting "cash" (ie, liquid) assets.  Amounts are shown  with
       normal positive sign, as in conventional financial statements.

       The  "cash"  accounts  shown  are those accounts declared with the Cash
       type, or otherwise all accounts under a top-level asset  account  (case
       insensitive,  plural  allowed) which do not have fixed, investment, re-
       ceivable or A/R in their name.

       (This report is essentially similar to "hledger balance --change assets
       not:fixed not:investment not:receivable".)

       Example:

              $ hledger cashflow
              Cashflow Statement

              Cash flows:
                               $-1  assets
                                $1    bank:saving
                               $-2    cash
              --------------------
                               $-1

              Total:
              --------------------
                               $-1

       With a reporting interval, multiple columns will be shown, one for each
       report period.  Normally cashflow shows changes in assets  per  period,
       though  as  with  multicolumn  balance reports you can alter the report
       mode with --change/--cumulative/--historical.  Instead of absolute val-
       ues percentages can be displayed with -%.

       This command also supports the output destination and output format op-
       tions The output formats supported are txt, csv, html, and  (experimen-
       tal) json.

   check
       check
       Check for various kinds of errors in your data.

       hledger  provides  a  number  of  built-in error checks to help prevent
       problems in your data.  Some of these are run  automatically;  or,  you
       can  use this check command to run them on demand, with no output and a
       zero exit code if all is well.  Specify their names (or  a  prefix)  as
       argument(s).

       Some examples:

              hledger check      # basic checks
              hledger check -s   # basic + strict checks
              hledger check ordereddates payees  # basic + two other checks

       Here are the checks currently available:

   Basic checks
       These checks are always run automatically, by (almost) all hledger com-
       mands, including check:

       o parseable - data files are well-formed and can be successfully parsed

       o autobalanced -  all  transactions  are  balanced,  inferring  missing
         amounts  where  necessary,  and possibly converting commodities using
         transaction prices or automatically-inferred transaction prices

       o assertions - all balance  assertions  in  the  journal  are  passing.
         (This check can be disabled with -I/--ignore-assertions.)

   Strict checks
       These additional checks are run when the -s/--strict (strict mode) flag
       is used.  Or, they can be run by giving their  names  as  arguments  to
       check:

       o accounts - all account names used by transactions have been declared

       o commodities - all commodity symbols used have been declared

   Other checks
       These  checks  can  be  run  only by giving their names as arguments to
       check.  They are more  specialised  and  not  desirable  for  everyone,
       therefore optional:

       o ordereddates  -  transactions are ordered by date (similar to the old
         check-dates command)

       o payees - all payees used by transactions have been declared

       o uniqueleafnames - all account leaf names are unique (similar  to  the
         old check-dupes command).

   Custom checks
       A  few  more  checks  are are available as separate add-on commands, in
       https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/tree/master/bin:

       o hledger-check-tagfiles - all  tag  values  containing  /  (a  forward
         slash) exist as file paths

       o hledger-check-fancyassertions  -  more complex balance assertions are
         passing

       You could make similar scripts to perform your own custom checks.  See:
       Cookbook -> Scripting.

   close
       close, equity
       Prints  a  "closing  balances"  transaction  and  an "opening balances"
       transaction that bring account balances to and from zero, respectively.
       These can be added to your journal file(s), eg to bring asset/liability
       balances forward into a new journal file, or to close out  revenues/ex-
       penses to retained earnings at the end of a period.

       You  can  print  just one of these transactions by using the --close or
       --open flag.  You can customise their descriptions  with  the  --close-
       desc and --open-desc options.

       One amountless posting to "equity:opening/closing balances" is added to
       balance the transactions, by default.  You can customise  this  account
       name  with  --close-acct  and  --open-acct;  if you specify only one of
       these, it will be used for both.

       With --x/--explicit, the equity posting's amount will be shown.  And if
       it  involves multiple commodities, a posting for each commodity will be
       shown, as with the print command.

       With --interleaved, the equity postings are shown next to the  postings
       they balance, which makes troubleshooting easier.

       By default, transaction prices in the journal are ignored when generat-
       ing the closing/opening transactions.  With --show-costs, this cost in-
       formation  is preserved (balance -B reports will be unchanged after the
       transition).  Separate postings are generated for  each  cost  in  each
       commodity.   Note  this can generate very large journal entries, if you
       have many foreign currency or investment transactions.

   close usage
       If you split your journal files by time (eg yearly), you will typically
       run  this command at the end of the year, and save the closing transac-
       tion as last entry of the old file, and the opening transaction as  the
       first  entry  of the new file.  This makes the files self contained, so
       that correct balances are reported no matter which of them are  loaded.
       Ie,  if you load just one file, the balances are initialised correctly;
       or if you load several files, the  redundant  closing/opening  transac-
       tions  cancel  each other out.  (They will show up in print or register
       reports; you can  exclude  them  with  a  query  like  not:desc:'(open-
       ing|closing) balances'.)

       If you're running a business, you might also use this command to "close
       the books" at the end of  an  accounting  period,  transferring  income
       statement  account  balances  to  retained  earnings.  (You may want to
       change the equity account name to something like "equity:retained earn-
       ings".)

       By  default,  the  closing transaction is dated yesterday, the balances
       are calculated as of end of yesterday, and the opening  transaction  is
       dated  today.  To close on some other date, use: hledger close -e OPEN-
       INGDATE.  Eg, to close/open on the 2018/2019  boundary,  use  -e  2019.
       You can also use -p or date:PERIOD (any starting date is ignored).

       Both  transactions  will  include balance assertions for the closed/re-
       opened accounts.  You probably shouldn't use status or realness filters
       (like  -C or -R or status:) with this command, or the generated balance
       assertions will depend on these flags.  Likewise, if you run this  com-
       mand  with  --auto, the balance assertions will probably always require
       --auto.

       Examples:

       Carrying asset/liability balances into a new file for 2019:

              $ hledger close -f 2018.journal -e 2019 assets liabilities --open
                  # (copy/paste the output to the start of your 2019 journal file)
              $ hledger close -f 2018.journal -e 2019 assets liabilities --close
                  # (copy/paste the output to the end of your 2018 journal file)

       Now:

              $ hledger bs -f 2019.journal                   # one file - balances are correct
              $ hledger bs -f 2018.journal -f 2019.journal   # two files - balances still correct
              $ hledger bs -f 2018.journal not:desc:closing  # to see year-end balances, must exclude closing txn

       Transactions spanning the closing date can complicate matters, breaking
       balance assertions:

              2018/12/30 a purchase made in 2018, clearing the following year
                  expenses:food          5
                  assets:bank:checking  -5  ; [2019/1/2]

       Here's one way to resolve that:

              ; in 2018.journal:
              2018/12/30 a purchase made in 2018, clearing the following year
                  expenses:food          5
                  liabilities:pending

              ; in 2019.journal:
              2019/1/2 clearance of last year's pending transactions
                  liabilities:pending    5 = 0
                  assets:checking

   codes
       codes
       List the codes seen in transactions, in the order parsed.

       This  command prints the value of each transaction's code field, in the
       order transactions were parsed.  The transaction code  is  an  optional
       value  written  in  parentheses between the date and description, often
       used to store a cheque number, order number or similar.

       Transactions aren't required to have a code, and missing or empty codes
       will  not  be shown by default.  With the -E/--empty flag, they will be
       printed as blank lines.

       You can add a query to select a subset of transactions.

       Examples:

              1/1 (123)
               (a)  1

              1/1 ()
               (a)  1

              1/1
               (a)  1

              1/1 (126)
               (a)  1

              $ hledger codes
              123
              124
              126

              $ hledger codes -E
              123
              124


              126

   commodities
       commodities
       List all commodity/currency symbols used or declared in the journal.

   descriptions
       descriptions
       List the unique descriptions that appear in transactions.

       This command lists the unique descriptions that appear in transactions,
       in  alphabetic order.  You can add a query to select a subset of trans-
       actions.

       Example:

              $ hledger descriptions
              Store Name
              Gas Station | Petrol
              Person A

   diff
       diff
       Compares a particular account's transactions in two  input  files.   It
       shows any transactions to this account which are in one file but not in
       the other.

       More precisely, for each posting affecting this account in either file,
       it  looks for a corresponding posting in the other file which posts the
       same amount to the same  account  (ignoring  date,  description,  etc.)
       Since postings not transactions are compared, this also works when mul-
       tiple bank transactions have been combined into a single journal entry.

       This is useful eg if you have downloaded an account's transactions from
       your  bank (eg as CSV data).  When hledger and your bank disagree about
       the account balance, you can compare the bank data with your journal to
       find out the cause.

       Examples:

              $ hledger diff -f $LEDGER_FILE -f bank.csv assets:bank:giro
              These transactions are in the first file only:

              2014/01/01 Opening Balances
                  assets:bank:giro              EUR ...
                  ...
                  equity:opening balances       EUR -...

              These transactions are in the second file only:

   files
       files
       List  all  files  included in the journal.  With a REGEX argument, only
       file names matching the regular expression (case sensitive) are shown.

   help
       help
       Show the hledger user manual in one of several formats, optionally  po-
       sitioned  at  a  given  TOPIC  (if possible).  TOPIC is any heading, or
       heading prefix, in the manual.  Some examples: commands,  print,  'auto
       postings', periodic.

       This  command  shows  the user manual built in to this hledger version.
       It can be useful if the correct version of the hledger manual,  or  the
       usual viewing tools, are not installed on your system.

       By default it uses the best viewer it can find in $PATH, in this order:
       info, man, $PAGER (unless a topic is specified), less, or stdout.  When
       run non-interactively, it always uses stdout.  Or you can select a par-
       ticular viewer with the -i (info), -m (man), or -p (pager) flags.

   import
       import
       Read new transactions added to each FILE since last run, and  add  them
       to  the  main journal file.  Or with --dry-run, just print the transac-
       tions that would be added.  Or with --catchup, just  mark  all  of  the
       FILEs' transactions as imported, without actually importing any.

       The input files are specified as arguments - no need to write -f before
       each one.  So eg to add new transactions from all CSV files to the main
       journal, it's just: hledger import *.csv

       New transactions are detected in the same way as print --new: by assum-
       ing transactions are always added to the input files in increasing date
       order, and by saving .latest.FILE state files.

       The  --dry-run output is in journal format, so you can filter it, eg to
       see only uncategorised transactions:

              $ hledger import --dry ... | hledger -f- print unknown --ignore-assertions

   Importing balance assignments
       Entries added by import will have their posting amounts  made  explicit
       (like  hledger  print  -x).  This means that any balance assignments in
       imported files must be evaluated; but, imported files don't get to  see
       the  main file's account balances.  As a result, importing entries with
       balance assignments (eg from an institution that provides only balances
       and  not  posting  amounts)  will  probably  generate incorrect posting
       amounts.  To avoid this problem, use print instead of import:

              $ hledger print IMPORTFILE [--new] >> $LEDGER_FILE

       (If you think import should leave amounts  implicit  like  print  does,
       please test it and send a pull request.)

   Commodity display styles
       Imported amounts will be formatted according to the canonical commodity
       styles (declared or inferred) in the main journal file.

   incomestatement
       incomestatement, is
       This command displays an income statement,  showing  revenues  and  ex-
       penses during one or more periods.  Amounts are shown with normal posi-
       tive sign, as in conventional financial statements.

       The revenue and expense accounts shown are those accounts declared with
       the  Revenue  or  Expense  type, or otherwise all accounts under a top-
       level revenue or income or expense account (case  insensitive,  plurals
       allowed).

       (This  report  is essentially similar to "hledger balance --change rev-
       enues expenses", with revenues sign-flipped.)

       Example:

              $ hledger incomestatement
              Income Statement

              Revenues:
                               $-2  income
                               $-1    gifts
                               $-1    salary
              --------------------
                               $-2

              Expenses:
                                $2  expenses
                                $1    food
                                $1    supplies
              --------------------
                                $2

              Total:
              --------------------
                                 0

       With a reporting interval, multiple columns will be shown, one for each
       report  period.   Normally  incomestatement shows revenues/expenses per
       period, though as with multicolumn balance reports you  can  alter  the
       report  mode with --change/--cumulative/--historical.  Instead of abso-
       lute values percentages can be displayed with -%.

       This command also supports the output destination and output format op-
       tions  The output formats supported are txt, csv, html, and (experimen-
       tal) json.

   notes
       notes
       List the unique notes that appear in transactions.

       This command lists the unique notes that appear in transactions, in al-
       phabetic  order.   You  can  add a query to select a subset of transac-
       tions.  The note is the part of the transaction description after  a  |
       character (or if there is no |, the whole description).

       Example:

              $ hledger notes
              Petrol
              Snacks

   payees
       payees
       List the unique payee/payer names that appear in transactions.

       This command lists the unique payee/payer names that appear in transac-
       tions, in alphabetic order.  You can add a query to select a subset  of
       transactions.   The payee/payer is the part of the transaction descrip-
       tion before a | character (or if there is no |, the whole description).

       Example:

              $ hledger payees
              Store Name
              Gas Station
              Person A

   prices
       prices
       Print market price directives from the  journal.   With  --costs,  also
       print  synthetic market prices based on transaction prices.  With --in-
       verted-costs, also print inverse prices based  on  transaction  prices.
       Prices  (and  postings  providing  prices)  can be filtered by a query.
       Price amounts are always displayed with their full precision.

   print
       print
       Show transaction journal entries, sorted by date.

       The print command displays full journal entries (transactions) from the
       journal  file,  sorted  by  date  (or with --date2, by secondary date).
       Amounts are shown right-aligned within each transaction (but not across
       all  transactions).   Directives and inter-transaction comments are not
       shown.  Eg:

              $ hledger print
              2008/01/01 income
                  assets:bank:checking            $1
                  income:salary                  $-1

              2008/06/01 gift
                  assets:bank:checking            $1
                  income:gifts                   $-1

              2008/06/02 save
                  assets:bank:saving              $1
                  assets:bank:checking           $-1

              2008/06/03 * eat & shop
                  expenses:food                $1
                  expenses:supplies            $1
                  assets:cash                 $-2

              2008/12/31 * pay off
                  liabilities:debts               $1
                  assets:bank:checking           $-1

       print's output is usually a valid hledger journal, and you can  process
       it again with a second hledger command.  This can be useful for certain
       kinds of search, eg:

              # Show running total of food expenses paid from cash.
              # -f- reads from stdin. -I/--ignore-assertions is sometimes needed.
              $ hledger print assets:cash | hledger -f- -I reg expenses:food

       There are some situations where print's output can become unparseable:

       o Rounding amounts according to  commodity  display  styles  can  cause
         transactions to appear unbalanced.

       o Valuation  affects  posting amounts but not balance assertion or bal-
         ance assignment amounts, potentially causing those to fail.

       o Auto postings can generate postings with too many missing amounts.

       Normally, the journal entry's explicit or implicit amount style is pre-
       served.  For example, when an amount is omitted in the journal, it will
       not appear in the output.  Similarly, when a transaction price  is  im-
       plied  but  not written, it will not appear in the output.  You can use
       the -x/--explicit flag to make all amounts and transaction  prices  ex-
       plicit,  which  can  be  useful  for troubleshooting or for making your
       journal more readable and robust against data entry errors.  -x is also
       implied by using any of -B,-V,-X,--value.

       Note,  -x/--explicit  will cause postings with a multi-commodity amount
       (these can arise when a multi-commodity  transaction  has  an  implicit
       amount)  to  be  split into multiple single-commodity postings, keeping
       the output parseable.

       With -B/--cost, amounts with transaction prices are converted  to  cost
       using that price.  This can be used for troubleshooting.

       With  -m/--match and a STR argument, print will show at most one trans-
       action: the one one whose description is most similar to  STR,  and  is
       most  recent.  STR should contain at least two characters.  If there is
       no similar-enough match, no transaction will be shown.

       With --new, for each FILE being read, hledger reads (and writes) a spe-
       cial  state  file  (.latest.FILE in the same directory), containing the
       latest transaction date(s) that were seen  last  time  FILE  was  read.
       When  this  file  is found, only transactions with newer dates (and new
       transactions on the latest date) are printed.  This is useful  for  ig-
       noring  already-seen  entries  in  import  data, such as downloaded CSV
       files.  Eg:

              $ hledger -f bank1.csv print --new
              (shows transactions added since last print --new on this file)

       This assumes that transactions added to FILE always have  same  or  in-
       creasing  dates,  and  that transactions on the same day do not get re-
       ordered.  See also the import command.

       This command also supports the output destination and output format op-
       tions  The  output  formats  supported are txt, csv, and (experimental)
       json and sql.

       Here's an example of print's CSV output:

              $ hledger print -Ocsv
              "txnidx","date","date2","status","code","description","comment","account","amount","commodity","credit","debit","posting-status","posting-comment"
              "1","2008/01/01","","","","income","","assets:bank:checking","1","$","","1","",""
              "1","2008/01/01","","","","income","","income:salary","-1","$","1","","",""
              "2","2008/06/01","","","","gift","","assets:bank:checking","1","$","","1","",""
              "2","2008/06/01","","","","gift","","income:gifts","-1","$","1","","",""
              "3","2008/06/02","","","","save","","assets:bank:saving","1","$","","1","",""
              "3","2008/06/02","","","","save","","assets:bank:checking","-1","$","1","","",""
              "4","2008/06/03","","*","","eat & shop","","expenses:food","1","$","","1","",""
              "4","2008/06/03","","*","","eat & shop","","expenses:supplies","1","$","","1","",""
              "4","2008/06/03","","*","","eat & shop","","assets:cash","-2","$","2","","",""
              "5","2008/12/31","","*","","pay off","","liabilities:debts","1","$","","1","",""
              "5","2008/12/31","","*","","pay off","","assets:bank:checking","-1","$","1","","",""

       o There is one CSV record per posting, with  the  parent  transaction's
         fields repeated.

       o The "txnidx" (transaction index) field shows which postings belong to
         the same transaction.  (This number might change if transactions  are
         reordered  within  the file, files are parsed/included in a different
         order, etc.)

       o The amount is separated into "commodity" (the  symbol)  and  "amount"
         (numeric quantity) fields.

       o The numeric amount is repeated in either the "credit" or "debit" col-
         umn, for convenience.  (Those names are not accurate in the  account-
         ing  sense;  it  just  puts negative amounts under credit and zero or
         greater amounts under debit.)

   print-unique
       print-unique
       Print transactions which do not reuse an already-seen description.

       Example:

              $ cat unique.journal
              1/1 test
               (acct:one)  1
              2/2 test
               (acct:two)  2
              $ LEDGER_FILE=unique.journal hledger print-unique
              (-f option not supported)
              2015/01/01 test
                  (acct:one)             1

   register
       register, reg
       Show postings and their running total.

       The register command displays matched postings, across all accounts, in
       date  order,  with  their  running total or running historical balance.
       (See also the aregister command, which shows matched transactions in  a
       specific account.)

       register normally shows line per posting, but note that multi-commodity
       amounts will occupy multiple lines (one line per commodity).

       It is typically used with a query selecting a  particular  account,  to
       see that account's activity:

              $ hledger register checking
              2008/01/01 income               assets:bank:checking            $1           $1
              2008/06/01 gift                 assets:bank:checking            $1           $2
              2008/06/02 save                 assets:bank:checking           $-1           $1
              2008/12/31 pay off              assets:bank:checking           $-1            0

       With --date2, it shows and sorts by secondary date instead.

       The  --historical/-H  flag  adds the balance from any undisplayed prior
       postings to the running total.  This is useful when  you  want  to  see
       only recent activity, with a historically accurate running balance:

              $ hledger register checking -b 2008/6 --historical
              2008/06/01 gift                 assets:bank:checking            $1           $2
              2008/06/02 save                 assets:bank:checking           $-1           $1
              2008/12/31 pay off              assets:bank:checking           $-1            0

       The --depth option limits the amount of sub-account detail displayed.

       The  --average/-A flag shows the running average posting amount instead
       of the running total (so, the final number displayed is the average for
       the  whole  report period).  This flag implies --empty (see below).  It
       is affected by --historical.  It works best when showing just  one  ac-
       count and one commodity.

       The  --related/-r  flag shows the other postings in the transactions of
       the postings which would normally be shown.

       The --invert flag negates all amounts.  For example, it can be used  on
       an income account where amounts are normally displayed as negative num-
       bers.  It's also useful to show postings on the  checking  account  to-
       gether with the related account:

              $ hledger register --related --invert assets:checking

       With a reporting interval, register shows summary postings, one per in-
       terval, aggregating the postings to each account:

              $ hledger register --monthly income
              2008/01                 income:salary                          $-1          $-1
              2008/06                 income:gifts                           $-1          $-2

       Periods with no activity, and summary postings with a zero amount,  are
       not shown by default; use the --empty/-E flag to see them:

              $ hledger register --monthly income -E
              2008/01                 income:salary                          $-1          $-1
              2008/02                                                          0          $-1
              2008/03                                                          0          $-1
              2008/04                                                          0          $-1
              2008/05                                                          0          $-1
              2008/06                 income:gifts                           $-1          $-2
              2008/07                                                          0          $-2
              2008/08                                                          0          $-2
              2008/09                                                          0          $-2
              2008/10                                                          0          $-2
              2008/11                                                          0          $-2
              2008/12                                                          0          $-2

       Often,  you'll want to see just one line per interval.  The --depth op-
       tion helps with this, causing subaccounts to be aggregated:

              $ hledger register --monthly assets --depth 1h
              2008/01                 assets                                  $1           $1
              2008/06                 assets                                 $-1            0
              2008/12                 assets                                 $-1          $-1

       Note when using report intervals, if you specify start/end dates  these
       will  be adjusted outward if necessary to contain a whole number of in-
       tervals.  This ensures that the  first  and  last  intervals  are  full
       length and comparable to the others in the report.

   Custom register output
       register  uses  the  full terminal width by default, except on windows.
       You can override this by setting the COLUMNS environment variable  (not
       a bash shell variable) or by using the --width/-w option.

       The  description  and  account columns normally share the space equally
       (about half of (width - 40) each).  You can adjust this by adding a de-
       scription width as part of --width's argument, comma-separated: --width
       W,D .  Here's a diagram (won't display correctly in --help):

              <--------------------------------- width (W) ---------------------------------->
              date (10)  description (D)       account (W-41-D)     amount (12)   balance (12)
              DDDDDDDDDD dddddddddddddddddddd  aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa  AAAAAAAAAAAA  AAAAAAAAAAAA

       and some examples:

              $ hledger reg                     # use terminal width (or 80 on windows)
              $ hledger reg -w 100              # use width 100
              $ COLUMNS=100 hledger reg         # set with one-time environment variable
              $ export COLUMNS=100; hledger reg # set till session end (or window resize)
              $ hledger reg -w 100,40           # set overall width 100, description width 40
              $ hledger reg -w $COLUMNS,40      # use terminal width, & description width 40

       This command also supports the output destination and output format op-
       tions  The  output  formats  supported are txt, csv, and (experimental)
       json.

   register-match
       register-match
       Print the one posting whose transaction description is closest to DESC,
       in  the  style  of the register command.  If there are multiple equally
       good matches, it shows the most recent.  Query  options  (options,  not
       arguments)  can be used to restrict the search space.  Helps ledger-au-
       tosync detect already-seen transactions when importing.

   rewrite
       rewrite
       Print all transactions, rewriting the postings of matched transactions.
       For  now  the only rewrite available is adding new postings, like print
       --auto.

       This is a start at a generic rewriter of transaction entries.  It reads
       the  default  journal and prints the transactions, like print, but adds
       one or more specified postings to any transactions matching QUERY.  The
       posting  amounts can be fixed, or a multiplier of the existing transac-
       tion's first posting amount.

       Examples:

              $ hledger-rewrite.hs ^income --add-posting '(liabilities:tax)  *.33  ; income tax' --add-posting '(reserve:gifts)  $100'
              $ hledger-rewrite.hs expenses:gifts --add-posting '(reserve:gifts)  *-1"'
              $ hledger-rewrite.hs -f rewrites.hledger

       rewrites.hledger may consist of entries like:

              = ^income amt:<0 date:2017
                (liabilities:tax)  *0.33  ; tax on income
                (reserve:grocery)  *0.25  ; reserve 25% for grocery
                (reserve:)  *0.25  ; reserve 25% for grocery

       Note the single quotes to protect the dollar sign from  bash,  and  the
       two spaces between account and amount.

       More:

              $ hledger rewrite -- [QUERY]        --add-posting "ACCT  AMTEXPR" ...
              $ hledger rewrite -- ^income        --add-posting '(liabilities:tax)  *.33'
              $ hledger rewrite -- expenses:gifts --add-posting '(budget:gifts)  *-1"'
              $ hledger rewrite -- ^income        --add-posting '(budget:foreign currency)  *0.25 JPY; diversify'

       Argument  for  --add-posting  option  is a usual posting of transaction
       with an exception for amount specification.  More  precisely,  you  can
       use '*' (star symbol) before the amount to indicate that that this is a
       factor for an amount of original matched posting.  If  the  amount  in-
       cludes a commodity name, the new posting amount will be in the new com-
       modity; otherwise, it will be in the matched posting  amount's  commod-
       ity.

   Re-write rules in a file
       During  the  run  this  tool will execute so called "Automated Transac-
       tions" found in any journal it process.  I.e instead of specifying this
       operations in command line you can put them in a journal file.

              $ rewrite-rules.journal

       Make contents look like this:

              = ^income
                  (liabilities:tax)  *.33

              = expenses:gifts
                  budget:gifts  *-1
                  assets:budget  *1

       Note  that '=' (equality symbol) that is used instead of date in trans-
       actions you usually write.  It indicates the query by which you want to
       match the posting to add new ones.

              $ hledger rewrite -- -f input.journal -f rewrite-rules.journal > rewritten-tidy-output.journal

       This is something similar to the commands pipeline:

              $ hledger rewrite -- -f input.journal '^income' --add-posting '(liabilities:tax)  *.33' \
                | hledger rewrite -- -f - expenses:gifts      --add-posting 'budget:gifts  *-1'       \
                                                              --add-posting 'assets:budget  *1'       \
                > rewritten-tidy-output.journal

       It  is  important  to understand that relative order of such entries in
       journal is important.  You can re-use result of previously added  post-
       ings.

   Diff output format
       To  use  this tool for batch modification of your journal files you may
       find useful output in form of unified diff.

              $ hledger rewrite -- --diff -f examples/sample.journal '^income' --add-posting '(liabilities:tax)  *.33'

       Output might look like:

              --- /tmp/examples/sample.journal
              +++ /tmp/examples/sample.journal
              @@ -18,3 +18,4 @@
               2008/01/01 income
              -    assets:bank:checking  $1
              +    assets:bank:checking            $1
                   income:salary
              +    (liabilities:tax)                0
              @@ -22,3 +23,4 @@
               2008/06/01 gift
              -    assets:bank:checking  $1
              +    assets:bank:checking            $1
                   income:gifts
              +    (liabilities:tax)                0

       If you'll pass this through patch tool you'll get transactions contain-
       ing the posting that matches your query be updated.  Note that multiple
       files might be update according to list of input  files  specified  via
       --file options and include directives inside of these files.

       Be  careful.  Whole transaction being re-formatted in a style of output
       from hledger print.

       See also:

       https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/issues/99

   rewrite vs. print --auto
       This command predates print --auto, and currently does  much  the  same
       thing, but with these differences:

       o with  multiple files, rewrite lets rules in any file affect all other
         files.  print --auto uses standard directive  scoping;  rules  affect
         only child files.

       o rewrite's  query  limits which transactions can be rewritten; all are
         printed.  print --auto's query limits which transactions are printed.

       o rewrite applies rules specified on command line or  in  the  journal.
         print --auto applies rules specified in the journal.

   roi
       roi
       Shows  the  time-weighted (TWR) and money-weighted (IRR) rate of return
       on your investments.

       This command assumes that you have account(s)  that  hold  nothing  but
       your investments and whenever you record current appraisal/valuation of
       these investments you offset unrealized profit and loss into account(s)
       that, again, hold nothing but unrealized profit and loss.

       Any  transactions  affecting  balance  of investment account(s) and not
       originating from unrealized profit and loss account(s) are  assumed  to
       be your investments or withdrawals.

       At  a  minimum,  you need to supply a query (which could be just an ac-
       count name) to select your investments with --inv, and another query to
       identify your profit and loss transactions with --pnl.

       This  command  will compute and display the internalized rate of return
       (IRR) and time-weighted rate of return (TWR) for your  investments  for
       the  time period requested.  Both rates of return are annualized before
       display, regardless of the length of reporting interval.

       Note, in some cases this report can fail, for these reasons:

       o Error (NotBracketed): No solution for Internal Rate of Return  (IRR).
         Possible  causes:  IRR is huge (>1000000%), balance of investment be-
         comes negative at some point in time.

       o Error (SearchFailed): Failed to find solution for  Internal  Rate  of
         Return (IRR).  Either search does not converge to a solution, or con-
         verges too slowly.

       Examples:

       o Using  roi  to  report  unrealised  gains:  https://github.com/simon-
         michael/hledger/blob/master/examples/roi-unrealised.ledger

       More background:

       "ROI"  stands  for "return on investment".  Traditionally this was com-
       puted as a difference between current value of investment and its  ini-
       tial value, expressed in percentage of the initial value.

       However, this approach is only practical in simple cases, where invest-
       ments receives no in-flows or out-flows of money,  and  where  rate  of
       growth is fixed over time.  For more complex scenarios you need differ-
       ent ways to compute rate of return, and this command implements two  of
       them: IRR and TWR.

       Internal  rate of return, or "IRR" (also called "money-weighted rate of
       return")  takes  into  account  effects  of  in-flows  and   out-flows.
       Naively, if you are withdrawing from your investment, your future gains
       would be smaller (in absolute numbers), and will be a smaller  percent-
       age  of  your initial investment, and if you are adding to your invest-
       ment, you will receive bigger absolute gains (but probably at the  same
       rate  of  return).  IRR is a way to compute rate of return for each pe-
       riod between in-flow or out-flow of money, and then combine them  in  a
       way that gives you an annual rate of return that investment is expected
       to generate.

       As mentioned before, in-flows and out-flows would be any cash that  you
       personally  put  in  or  withdraw, and for the "roi" command, these are
       transactions that involve account(s) matching --inv  argument  and  NOT
       involve account(s) matching --pnl argument.

       Presumably,  you  will also record changes in the value of your invest-
       ment, and balance  them  against  "profit  and  loss"  (or  "unrealized
       gains") account.  Note that in order for IRR to compute the precise ef-
       fect of your in-flows and out-flows on the rate  of  return,  you  will
       need  to  record  the value of your investement on or close to the days
       when in- or out-flows occur.

       Implementation of IRR in hledger should match the XIRR formula  in  Ex-
       cel.

       Second  way  to  compute  rate of return that roi command implements is
       called "time-weighted rate of return" or "TWR".  Like IRR, it will also
       break  the history of your investment into periods between in-flows and
       out-flows to compute rate of return per each period and then a compound
       rate of return.  However, internal workings of TWR are quite different.

       In  technical  terms,  IRR uses the same approach as computation of net
       present value, and tries to find a discount rate that makes net present
       value of all the cash flows of your investment to add up to zero.  This
       could be hard to wrap your head around, especially if you haven't  done
       discounted cash flow analysis before.

       TWR  represents  your  investment as an imaginary "unit fund" where in-
       flows/ out-flows lead to buying or selling "units" of  your  investment
       and changes in its value change the value of "investment unit".  Change
       in "unit price" over the reporting period gives you rate of  return  of
       your investment.

       References:  * Explanation of rate of return * Explanation of IRR * Ex-
       planation of TWR * Examples of computing IRR and TWR and discussion  of
       the limitations of both metrics

       More examples:

       Lets  say  that we found an investment in Snake Oil that is proising to
       give us 10% annually:

              2019-01-01 Investing in Snake Oil
                assets:cash  -$100
                investment:snake oil

              2019-12-24 Recording the growth of Snake Oil
                investment:snake oil   = $110
                equity:unrealized gains

       For now, basic computation of the rate of return, as well  as  IRR  and
       TWR, gives us the expected 10%:

              $ hledger roi -Y --inv investment --pnl "unrealized"
              +---++------------+------------++---------------+----------+-------------+-----++--------+--------+
              |   ||      Begin |        End || Value (begin) | Cashflow | Value (end) | PnL ||    IRR |    TWR |
              +===++============+============++===============+==========+=============+=====++========+========+
              | 1 || 2019-01-01 | 2019-12-31 ||             0 |      100 |         110 |  10 || 10.00% | 10.00% |
              +---++------------+------------++---------------+----------+-------------+-----++--------+--------+

       However,  lets  say  that  shorty  after  investing in the Snake Oil we
       started to have second thoughs, so we  prompty  withdrew  $90,  leaving
       only  $10 in.  Before Christmas, though, we started to get the "fear of
       mission out", so we put the $90 back in.  So for most of the year,  our
       investment was just $10 dollars, and it gave us just $1 in growth:

              2019-01-01 Investing in Snake Oil
                assets:cash  -$100
                investment:snake oil

              2019-01-02 Buyers remorse
                assets:cash  $90
                investment:snake oil

              2019-12-30 Fear of missing out
                assets:cash  -$90
                investment:snake oil

              2019-12-31 Recording the growth of Snake Oil
                investment:snake oil   = $101
                equity:unrealized gains

       Now IRR and TWR are drastically different:

              $ hledger roi -Y --inv investment --pnl "unrealized"
              +---++------------+------------++---------------+----------+-------------+-----++-------+-------+
              |   ||      Begin |        End || Value (begin) | Cashflow | Value (end) | PnL ||   IRR |   TWR |
              +===++============+============++===============+==========+=============+=====++=======+=======+
              | 1 || 2019-01-01 | 2019-12-31 ||             0 |      100 |         101 |   1 || 9.32% | 1.00% |
              +---++------------+------------++---------------+----------+-------------+-----++-------+-------+

       Here, IRR tells us that we made close to 10% on the $10 dollars that we
       had in the account most of the time.  And TWR is ...  just 1%?  Why?

       Based on the transactions in our journal, TWR "think" that we are  buy-
       ing  back  $90  worst of Snake Oil at the same price that it had at the
       beginning of they year, and then after that our $100 investment gets $1
       increase  in value, or 1% of $100.  Let's take a closer look at what is
       happening here by asking for quarterly reports instead of annual:

              $ hledger roi -Q --inv investment --pnl "unrealized"
              +---++------------+------------++---------------+----------+-------------+-----++--------+-------+
              |   ||      Begin |        End || Value (begin) | Cashflow | Value (end) | PnL ||    IRR |   TWR |
              +===++============+============++===============+==========+=============+=====++========+=======+
              | 1 || 2019-01-01 | 2019-03-31 ||             0 |       10 |          10 |   0 ||  0.00% | 0.00% |
              | 2 || 2019-04-01 | 2019-06-30 ||            10 |        0 |          10 |   0 ||  0.00% | 0.00% |
              | 3 || 2019-07-01 | 2019-09-30 ||            10 |        0 |          10 |   0 ||  0.00% | 0.00% |
              | 4 || 2019-10-01 | 2019-12-31 ||            10 |       90 |         101 |   1 || 37.80% | 4.03% |
              +---++------------+------------++---------------+----------+-------------+-----++--------+-------+

       Now both IRR and TWR are thrown off by the fact that all of the  growth
       for  our investment happens in Q4 2019.  This happes because IRR compu-
       tation is still yielding 9.32% and TWR is still 1%, but this time these
       are  rates for three month period instead of twelve, so in order to get
       an annual rate they should be multiplied by four!

       Let's try to keep a better record of how Snake Oil grew in value:

              2019-01-01 Investing in Snake Oil
                assets:cash  -$100
                investment:snake oil

              2019-01-02 Buyers remorse
                assets:cash  $90
                investment:snake oil

              2019-02-28 Recording the growth of Snake Oil
                investment:snake oil
                equity:unrealized gains  -$0.25

              2019-06-30 Recording the growth of Snake Oil
                investment:snake oil
                equity:unrealized gains  -$0.25

              2019-09-30 Recording the growth of Snake Oil
                investment:snake oil
                equity:unrealized gains  -$0.25

              2019-12-30 Fear of missing out
                assets:cash  -$90
                investment:snake oil

              2019-12-31 Recording the growth of Snake Oil
                investment:snake oil
                equity:unrealized gains  -$0.25

       Would our quartery report look better now?  Almost:

              $ hledger roi -Q --inv investment --pnl "unrealized"
              +---++------------+------------++---------------+----------+-------------+------++--------+--------+
              |   ||      Begin |        End || Value (begin) | Cashflow | Value (end) |  PnL ||    IRR |    TWR |
              +===++============+============++===============+==========+=============+======++========+========+
              | 1 || 2019-01-01 | 2019-03-31 ||             0 |       10 |       10.25 | 0.25 ||  9.53% | 10.53% |
              | 2 || 2019-04-01 | 2019-06-30 ||         10.25 |        0 |       10.50 | 0.25 || 10.15% | 10.15% |
              | 3 || 2019-07-01 | 2019-09-30 ||         10.50 |        0 |       10.75 | 0.25 ||  9.79% |  9.78% |
              | 4 || 2019-10-01 | 2019-12-31 ||         10.75 |       90 |      101.00 | 0.25 ||  8.05% |  1.00% |
              +---++------------+------------++---------------+----------+-------------+------++--------+--------+

       Something is still wrong with TWR computation for Q4, and if  you  have
       been  paying attention you know what it is already: big $90 buy-back is
       recorded prior to the only transaction  that  captures  the  change  of
       value  of  Snake  Oil  that happened in this time period.  Lets combine
       transactions from 30th and 31st of Dec into one:

              2019-12-30 Fear of missing out and growth of Snake Oil
                assets:cash  -$90
                investment:snake oil
                equity:unrealized gains  -$0.25

       Now growth of investment properly affects its price at the time of buy-
       back:

              $ hledger roi -Q --inv investment --pnl "unrealized"
              +---++------------+------------++---------------+----------+-------------+------++--------+--------+
              |   ||      Begin |        End || Value (begin) | Cashflow | Value (end) |  PnL ||    IRR |    TWR |
              +===++============+============++===============+==========+=============+======++========+========+
              | 1 || 2019-01-01 | 2019-03-31 ||             0 |       10 |       10.25 | 0.25 ||  9.53% | 10.53% |
              | 2 || 2019-04-01 | 2019-06-30 ||         10.25 |        0 |       10.50 | 0.25 || 10.15% | 10.15% |
              | 3 || 2019-07-01 | 2019-09-30 ||         10.50 |        0 |       10.75 | 0.25 ||  9.79% |  9.78% |
              | 4 || 2019-10-01 | 2019-12-31 ||         10.75 |       90 |      101.00 | 0.25 ||  8.05% |  9.57% |
              +---++------------+------------++---------------+----------+-------------+------++--------+--------+

       And  for  annual report, TWR now reports the exact profitability of our
       investment:

              $ hledger roi -Y --inv investment --pnl "unrealized"
              +---++------------+------------++---------------+----------+-------------+------++-------+--------+
              |   ||      Begin |        End || Value (begin) | Cashflow | Value (end) |  PnL ||   IRR |    TWR |
              +===++============+============++===============+==========+=============+======++=======+========+
              | 1 || 2019-01-01 | 2019-12-31 ||             0 |      100 |      101.00 | 1.00 || 9.32% | 10.00% |
              +---++------------+------------++---------------+----------+-------------+------++-------+--------+

   stats
       stats
       Show some journal statistics.

       The stats command displays summary information for the  whole  journal,
       or  a matched part of it.  With a reporting interval, it shows a report
       for each report period.

       Example:

              $ hledger stats
              Main journal file        : /src/hledger/examples/sample.journal
              Included journal files   :
              Transactions span        : 2008-01-01 to 2009-01-01 (366 days)
              Last transaction         : 2008-12-31 (2333 days ago)
              Transactions             : 5 (0.0 per day)
              Transactions last 30 days: 0 (0.0 per day)
              Transactions last 7 days : 0 (0.0 per day)
              Payees/descriptions      : 5
              Accounts                 : 8 (depth 3)
              Commodities              : 1 ($)
              Market prices            : 12 ($)

       This command also supports output destination and output format  selec-
       tion.

   tags
       tags
       List  the  unique tag names used in the journal.  With a TAGREGEX argu-
       ment, only tag names matching the regular expression (case insensitive)
       are  shown.  With QUERY arguments, only transactions matching the query
       are considered.

       With the --values flag, the tags' unique values are listed instead.

       With --parsed flag, all tags or values are shown in the order they  are
       parsed from the input data, including duplicates.

       With  -E/--empty,  any blank/empty values will also be shown, otherwise
       they are omitted.

   test
       test
       Run built-in unit tests.

       This command runs the unit tests built in to hledger  and  hledger-lib,
       printing  the results on stdout.  If any test fails, the exit code will
       be non-zero.

       This is mainly used by hledger developers, but you can also use  it  to
       sanity-check  the  installed  hledger executable on your platform.  All
       tests are expected to pass - if you ever see a failure,  please  report
       as a bug!

       This command also accepts tasty test runner options, written after a --
       (double hyphen).  Eg to run only the tests in Hledger.Data.Amount, with
       ANSI colour codes disabled:

              $ hledger test -- -pData.Amount --color=never

       For  help  on these, see https://github.com/feuerbach/tasty#options (--
       --help currently doesn't show them).

   About add-on commands
       Add-on commands are programs or scripts in your PATH

       o whose name starts with hledger-

       o whose name ends with a  recognised  file  extension:  .bat,.com,.exe,
         .hs,.lhs,.pl,.py,.rb,.rkt,.sh or none

       o and (on unix, mac) which are executable by the current user.

       Add-ons  are  a relatively easy way to add local features or experiment
       with new ideas.  They can be  written  in  any  language,  but  haskell
       scripts  have  a  big  advantage: they can use the same hledger library
       functions that built-in commands use for command-line options,  parsing
       and  reporting.   Some experimental/example add-on scripts can be found
       in the hledger repo's bin/ directory.

       Note in a hledger command line, add-on command flags must have a double
       dash (--) preceding them.  Eg you must write:

              $ hledger web -- --serve

       and not:

              $ hledger web --serve

       (because the --serve flag belongs to hledger-web, not hledger).

       The -h/--help and --version flags don't require --.

       If you have any trouble with this, remember you can always run the add-
       on program directly, eg:

              $ hledger-web --serve

JOURNAL FORMAT
       hledger's default file format, representing a General Journal.

       hledger's usual data source is a plain text file containing journal en-
       tries  in  hledger journal format.  This file represents a standard ac-
       counting general journal.  I use file names  ending  in  .journal,  but
       that's not required.  The journal file contains a number of transaction
       entries, each describing a transfer of money (or any commodity) between
       two or more named accounts, in a simple format readable by both hledger
       and humans.

       hledger's journal format is a compatible subset,  mostly,  of  ledger's
       journal  format,  so  hledger  can  work with compatible ledger journal
       files as well.  It's safe, and encouraged,  to  run  both  hledger  and
       ledger on the same journal file, eg to validate the results you're get-
       ting.

       You can use hledger without learning any more about this file; just use
       the add or web or import commands to create and update it.

       Many users, though, edit the journal file with a text editor, and track
       changes with a version control system such as git.  Editor addons  such
       as  ledger-mode  or  hledger-mode  for  Emacs,  vim-ledger for Vim, and
       hledger-vscode for Visual Studio Code, make this easier, adding colour,
       formatting, tab completion, and useful commands.  See Editor configura-
       tion at hledger.org for the full list.

       Here's a description of each part of the  file  format  (and  hledger's
       data  model).   These  are  mostly in the order you'll use them, but in
       some cases related concepts have been grouped together for easy  refer-
       ence,  or  linked before they are introduced, so feel free to skip over
       anything that looks unnecessary right now.

   Transactions
       Transactions are the main unit of information in a journal file.   They
       represent  events, typically a movement of some quantity of commodities
       between two or more named accounts.

       Each transaction is recorded as a journal entry, beginning with a  sim-
       ple date in column 0.  This can be followed by any of the following op-
       tional fields, separated by spaces:

       o a status character (empty, !, or *)

       o a code (any short number or text, enclosed in parentheses)

       o a description (any remaining text until end of line or a semicolon)

       o a comment (any remaining text following  a  semicolon  until  end  of
         line, and any following indented lines beginning with a semicolon)

       o 0 or more indented posting lines, describing what was transferred and
         the accounts involved (indented comment lines are also  allowed,  but
         not blank lines or non-indented lines).

       Here's a simple journal file containing one transaction:

              2008/01/01 income
                assets:bank:checking   $1
                income:salary         $-1

   Dates
   Simple dates
       Dates  in  the  journal  file  use  simple  dates format: YYYY-MM-DD or
       YYYY/MM/DD or YYYY.MM.DD, with leading zeros optional.  The year may be
       omitted,  in  which case it will be inferred from the context: the cur-
       rent transaction, the default year set with a default  year  directive,
       or   the  current  date  when  the  command  is  run.   Some  examples:
       2010-01-31, 2010/01/31, 2010.1.31, 1/31.

       (The UI also accepts simple dates, as well as the more  flexible  smart
       dates documented in the hledger manual.)

   Secondary dates
       Real-life  transactions  sometimes  involve more than one date - eg the
       date you write a cheque, and the date it clears in your bank.  When you
       want  to  model this, for more accurate daily balances, you can specify
       individual posting dates.

       Or, you can use the older secondary date feature (Ledger calls it  aux-
       iliary  date or effective date).  Note: we support this for compatibil-
       ity, but I usually recommend avoiding this feature; posting  dates  are
       almost always clearer and simpler.

       A secondary date is written after the primary date, following an equals
       sign.  If the year is omitted, the  primary  date's  year  is  assumed.
       When  running  reports, the primary (left) date is used by default, but
       with the --date2 flag (or --aux-date  or  --effective),  the  secondary
       (right) date will be used instead.

       The  meaning of secondary dates is up to you, but it's best to follow a
       consistent rule.  Eg "primary = the bank's clearing date,  secondary  =
       date the transaction was initiated, if different", as shown here:

              2010/2/23=2/19 movie ticket
                expenses:cinema                   $10
                assets:checking

              $ hledger register checking
              2010-02-23 movie ticket         assets:checking                $-10         $-10

              $ hledger register checking --date2
              2010-02-19 movie ticket         assets:checking                $-10         $-10

   Posting dates
       You  can  give  individual  postings a different date from their parent
       transaction, by adding a posting comment containing a tag  (see  below)
       like date:DATE.  This is probably the best way to control posting dates
       precisely.  Eg in this example the expense should  appear  in  May  re-
       ports,  and  the  deduction from checking should be reported on 6/1 for
       easy bank reconciliation:

              2015/5/30
                  expenses:food     $10  ; food purchased on saturday 5/30
                  assets:checking        ; bank cleared it on monday, date:6/1

              $ hledger -f t.j register food
              2015-05-30                      expenses:food                  $10           $10

              $ hledger -f t.j register checking
              2015-06-01                      assets:checking               $-10          $-10

       DATE should be a simple date; if the year is not specified it will  use
       the  year  of  the  transaction's date.  You can set the secondary date
       similarly, with date2:DATE2.  The date: or  date2:  tags  must  have  a
       valid  simple  date  value  if they are present, eg a date: tag with no
       value is not allowed.

       Ledger's earlier, more compact bracketed date syntax is also supported:
       [DATE],  [DATE=DATE2]  or  [=DATE2].  hledger will attempt to parse any
       square-bracketed sequence of the 0123456789/-.= characters in this way.
       With  this  syntax, DATE infers its year from the transaction and DATE2
       infers its year from DATE.

   Status
       Transactions, or individual postings within a transaction, can  have  a
       status  mark,  which  is  a single character before the transaction de-
       scription or posting account name, separated from it by a space,  indi-
       cating one of three statuses:

       mark     status
       ------------------
                unmarked
       !        pending
       *        cleared

       When  reporting,  you  can  filter  by  status  with the -U/--unmarked,
       -P/--pending, and -C/--cleared flags; or  the  status:,  status:!,  and
       status:* queries; or the U, P, C keys in hledger-ui.

       Note,  in Ledger and in older versions of hledger, the "unmarked" state
       is called "uncleared".  As of hledger 1.3 we have  renamed  it  to  un-
       marked for clarity.

       To  replicate Ledger and old hledger's behaviour of also matching pend-
       ing, combine -U and -P.

       Status marks are optional, but can be helpful eg for  reconciling  with
       real-world accounts.  Some editor modes provide highlighting and short-
       cuts for working with status.  Eg in Emacs ledger-mode, you can  toggle
       transaction status with C-c C-e, or posting status with C-c C-c.

       What  "uncleared", "pending", and "cleared" actually mean is up to you.
       Here's one suggestion:

       status       meaning
       --------------------------------------------------------------------------
       uncleared    recorded but not yet reconciled; needs review
       pending      tentatively reconciled (if needed, eg during a big reconcil-
                    iation)
       cleared      complete, reconciled as far as possible, and considered cor-
                    rect

       With this scheme, you would use -PC to see the current balance at  your
       bank, -U to see things which will probably hit your bank soon (like un-
       cashed checks), and no flags to see the most up-to-date state  of  your
       finances.

   Description
       A  transaction's description is the rest of the line following the date
       and status mark (or until a  comment  begins).   Sometimes  called  the
       "narration" in traditional bookkeeping, it can be used for whatever you
       wish, or left blank.  Transaction descriptions can be  queried,  unlike
       comments.

   Payee and note
       You can optionally include a | (pipe) character in descriptions to sub-
       divide the description into separate fields for payee/payer name on the
       left (up to the first |) and an additional note field on the right (af-
       ter the first |).  This may be worthwhile if you need to do  more  pre-
       cise querying and pivoting by payee or by note.

   Comments
       Lines in the journal beginning with a semicolon (;) or hash (#) or star
       (*) are comments, and will be ignored.  (Star comments  cause  org-mode
       nodes  to  be  ignored, allowing emacs users to fold and navigate their
       journals with org-mode or orgstruct-mode.)

       You can attach comments to a transaction by writing them after the  de-
       scription and/or indented on the following lines (before the postings).
       Similarly, you can attach comments to an individual posting by  writing
       them after the amount and/or indented on the following lines.  Transac-
       tion and posting comments must begin with a semicolon (;).

       Some examples:

              # a file comment
              ; another file comment
              * also a file comment, useful in org/orgstruct mode

              comment
              A multiline file comment, which continues
              until a line containing just "end comment"
              (or end of file).
              end comment

              2012/5/14 something  ; a transaction comment
                  ; the transaction comment, continued
                  posting1  1  ; a comment for posting 1
                  posting2
                  ; a comment for posting 2
                  ; another comment line for posting 2
              ; a file comment (because not indented)

       You can also comment larger regions of a file  using  comment  and  end
       comment directives.

   Tags
       Tags  are  a  way  to add extra labels or labelled data to postings and
       transactions, which you can then search or pivot on.

       A simple tag is a word (which may contain hyphens) followed by  a  full
       colon, written inside a transaction or posting comment line:

              2017/1/16 bought groceries  ; sometag:

       Tags  can  have  a  value, which is the text after the colon, up to the
       next comma or end of line, with leading/trailing whitespace removed:

                  expenses:food    $10 ; a-posting-tag: the tag value

       Note this means hledger's tag values can not  contain  commas  or  new-
       lines.  Ending at commas means you can write multiple short tags on one
       line, comma separated:

                  assets:checking  ; a comment containing tag1:, tag2: some value ...

       Here,

       o "a comment containing" is just comment text, not a tag

       o "tag1" is a tag with no value

       o "tag2" is another tag, whose value is "some value ..."

       Tags in a transaction comment affect the transaction  and  all  of  its
       postings,  while  tags  in  a posting comment affect only that posting.
       For example, the following transaction has three tags (A, TAG2,  third-
       tag) and the posting has four (those plus posting-tag):

              1/1 a transaction  ; A:, TAG2:
                  ; third-tag: a third transaction tag, <- with a value
                  (a)  $1  ; posting-tag:

       Tags  are  like  Ledger's metadata feature, except hledger's tag values
       are simple strings.

   Postings
       A posting is an addition of some amount to, or removal of  some  amount
       from,  an account.  Each posting line begins with at least one space or
       tab (2 or 4 spaces is common), followed by:

       o (optional) a status character (empty, !, or *), followed by a space

       o (required) an account name (any text,  optionally  containing  single
         spaces, until end of line or a double space)

       o (optional) two or more spaces or tabs followed by an amount.

       Positive  amounts  are being added to the account, negative amounts are
       being removed.

       The amounts within a transaction must always sum up to zero.  As a con-
       venience,  one  amount  may be left blank; it will be inferred so as to
       balance the transaction.

       Be sure to note the unusual two-space delimiter  between  account  name
       and  amount.  This makes it easy to write account names containing spa-
       ces.  But if you accidentally leave only one space (or tab) before  the
       amount, the amount will be considered part of the account name.

   Virtual postings
       A posting with a parenthesised account name is called a virtual posting
       or unbalanced posting, which means it is exempt  from  the  usual  rule
       that a transaction's postings must balance add up to zero.

       This  is  not  part  of double entry accounting, so you might choose to
       avoid this feature.  Or you can use it sparingly  for  certain  special
       cases  where  it can be convenient.  Eg, you could set opening balances
       without using a balancing equity account:

              1/1 opening balances
                (assets:checking)   $1000
                (assets:savings)    $2000

       A posting with a bracketed account name is called  a  balanced  virtual
       posting.  The balanced virtual postings in a transaction must add up to
       zero (separately from other postings).  Eg:

              1/1 buy food with cash, update budget envelope subaccounts, & something else
                assets:cash                    $-10 ; <- these balance
                expenses:food                    $7 ; <-
                expenses:food                    $3 ; <-
                [assets:checking:budget:food]  $-10    ; <- and these balance
                [assets:checking:available]     $10    ; <-
                (something:else)                 $5       ; <- not required to balance

       Ordinary non-parenthesised,  non-bracketed  postings  are  called  real
       postings.   You  can  exclude  virtual  postings  from reports with the
       -R/--real flag or real:1 query.

   Account names
       Account names typically have several parts separated by a  full  colon,
       from  which hledger derives a hierarchical chart of accounts.  They can
       be anything you like, but in finance there are traditionally five  top-
       level accounts: assets, liabilities, revenue, expenses, and equity.

       Account  names  may  contain single spaces, eg: assets:accounts receiv-
       able.  Because of this, they must always be followed  by  two  or  more
       spaces (or newline).

       Account names can be aliased.

   Amounts
       After  the  account  name, there is usually an amount.  (Important: be-
       tween account name and amount, there must be two or more spaces.)

       hledger's amount format is flexible, supporting  several  international
       formats.   Here  are  some examples.  Amounts have a number (the "quan-
       tity"):

              1

       ..and usually a currency or commodity name (the "commodity").  This  is
       a  symbol,  word, or phrase, to the left or right of the quantity, with
       or without a separating space:

              $1
              4000 AAPL

       If the commodity name contains spaces, numbers, or punctuation, it must
       be enclosed in double quotes:

              3 "no. 42 green apples"

       Amounts can be preceded by a minus sign (or a plus sign, though plus is
       the default), The sign can be written before or after a left-side  com-
       modity symbol:

              -$1
              $-1

       One  or more spaces between the sign and the number are acceptable when
       parsing (but they won't be displayed in output):

              + $1
              $-      1

       Scientific E notation is allowed:

              1E-6
              EUR 1E3

       A decimal mark can be written as a period or a comma:

              1.23
              1,23456780000009

   Digit group marks
       In the integer part of the quantity (left of the decimal mark),  groups
       of  digits  can  optionally  be  separated  by a "digit group mark" - a
       space, comma, or period (different from the decimal mark):

                   $1,000,000.00
                EUR 2.000.000,00
              INR 9,99,99,999.00
                    1 000 000.9455

       Note, a number containing a single group mark and no  decimal  mark  is
       ambiguous.  Are these group marks or decimal marks ?

              1,000
              1.000

       hledger will treat them both as decimal marks by default (cf #793).  If
       you use digit group marks, to prevent confusion and undetected typos we
       recommend  you write commodity directives at the top of the file to ex-
       plicitly declare the decimal mark (and optionally a digit group  mark).
       Note,  these  formats ("amount styles") are specific to each commodity,
       so if your data uses multiple formats, hledger can handle it:

              commodity $1,000.00
              commodity EUR 1.000,00
              commodity INR 9,99,99,999.00
              commodity       1 000 000.9455

   Commodity display style
       For the amounts in each commodity, hledger chooses a consistent display
       style.   (Excluding  price amounts, which are always displayed as writ-
       ten).  The display style is chosen as follows:

       o If there is a commodity directive (or  default  commodity  directive)
         for the commodity, its style is used (see examples above).

       o Otherwise  the  style  is inferred from the amounts in that commodity
         seen in the journal.

       o Or if there are no such amounts in the journal, a  default  style  is
         used (like $1000.00).

       A style is inferred from the journal amounts in a commodity as follows:

       o Use  the  general style (decimal mark, symbol placement) of the first
         amount

       o Use the first-seen digit group style (digit group mark,  digit  group
         sizes), if any

       o Use the maximum number of decimal places of all.

       Transaction  price amounts don't affect the commodity display style di-
       rectly, but occasionally they can do so indirectly (eg when a posting's
       amount  is inferred using a transaction price).  If you find this caus-
       ing problems, use a commodity directive to fix the display style.

       In summary, each commodity's amounts will be normalised to

       o the style declared by a commodity directive

       o or, the style of the first posting amount in the  journal,  with  the
         first-seen  digit  group style and the maximum-seen number of decimal
         places.

       So if your reports are showing amounts in a way you don't like, eg with
       too  many  decimal places, use a commodity directive to set the commod-
       ity's display style.  For example:

              # declare euro, dollar and bitcoin commodities and set their display styles:
              commodity EUR 1.000,
              commodity $1000.00
              commodity 1000.00000000 BTC

   Rounding
       Amounts are stored internally as decimal numbers with up to 255 decimal
       places,  and  displayed  with the number of decimal places specified by
       the commodity display style.  Note, hledger uses banker's rounding:  it
       rounds  to  the nearest even number, eg 0.5 displayed with zero decimal
       places is "0").  (Guaranteed since hledger 1.17.1;  in  older  versions
       this could vary if hledger was built with Decimal < 0.5.1.)

   Transaction prices
       Within a transaction, you can note an amount's price in another commod-
       ity.  This can be used to document the cost (in a purchase) or  selling
       price  (in  a  sale).   For  example,  transaction prices are useful to
       record purchases of a foreign currency.  Note  transaction  prices  are
       fixed at the time of the transaction, and do not change over time.  See
       also market prices, which represent prevailing exchange rates on a cer-
       tain date.

       There are several ways to record a transaction price:

       1. Write the price per unit, as @ UNITPRICE after the amount:

                  2009/1/1
                    assets:euros     EUR100 @ $1.35  ; one hundred euros purchased at $1.35 each
                    assets:dollars                 ; balancing amount is -$135.00

       2. Write the total price, as @@ TOTALPRICE after the amount:

                  2009/1/1
                    assets:euros     EUR100 @@ $135  ; one hundred euros purchased at $135 for the lot
                    assets:dollars

       3. Specify amounts for all postings, using exactly two commodities, and
          let hledger infer the price that balances the transaction:

                  2009/1/1
                    assets:euros     EUR100          ; one hundred euros purchased
                    assets:dollars  $-135          ; for $135

       4. Like 1, but the @ is parenthesised, i.e.  (@); this is for  compati-
          bility  with Ledger journals (Virtual posting costs), and is equiva-
          lent to 1 in hledger.

       5. Like 2, but as in 4 the @@ is parenthesised, i.e.  (@@); in hledger,
          this is equivalent to 2.

       Use  the -B/--cost flag to convert amounts to their transaction price's
       commodity, if any.  (mnemonic: "B" is from "cost Basis", as in Ledger).
       Eg here is how -B affects the balance report for the example above:

              $ hledger bal -N --flat
                             $-135  assets:dollars
                              EUR100  assets:euros
              $ hledger bal -N --flat -B
                             $-135  assets:dollars
                              $135  assets:euros    # <- the euros' cost

       Note  -B is sensitive to the order of postings when a transaction price
       is inferred: the inferred price will be in the commodity  of  the  last
       amount.  So if example 3's postings are reversed, while the transaction
       is equivalent, -B shows something different:

              2009/1/1
                assets:dollars  $-135              ; 135 dollars sold
                assets:euros     EUR100              ; for 100 euros

              $ hledger bal -N --flat -B
                             EUR-100  assets:dollars  # <- the dollars' selling price
                              EUR100  assets:euros

   Lot prices, lot dates
       Ledger allows another kind of price, lot price (four  variants:  {UNIT-
       PRICE},   {{TOTALPRICE}},   {=FIXEDUNITPRICE},   {{=FIXEDTOTALPRICE}}),
       and/or a lot date ([DATE]) to be specified.  These are normally used to
       select  a  lot when selling investments.  hledger will parse these, for
       compatibility with Ledger journals,  but  currently  ignores  them.   A
       transaction  price,  lot price and/or lot date may appear in any order,
       after the posting amount and before the balance assertion if any.

   Balance assertions
       hledger supports Ledger-style  balance  assertions  in  journal  files.
       These  look  like, for example, = EXPECTEDBALANCE following a posting's
       amount.  Eg here we assert the expected dollar balance  in  accounts  a
       and b after each posting:

              2013/1/1
                a   $1  =$1
                b       =$-1

              2013/1/2
                a   $1  =$2
                b  $-1  =$-2

       After reading a journal file, hledger will check all balance assertions
       and report an error if any of them fail.  Balance assertions  can  pro-
       tect  you  from, eg, inadvertently disrupting reconciled balances while
       cleaning up old entries.  You can disable  them  temporarily  with  the
       -I/--ignore-assertions flag, which can be useful for troubleshooting or
       for reading Ledger files.  (Note: this flag currently does not  disable
       balance assignments, below).

   Assertions and ordering
       hledger  sorts  an  account's postings and assertions first by date and
       then (for postings on the same day) by parse order.  Note this is  dif-
       ferent from Ledger, which sorts assertions only by parse order.  (Also,
       Ledger assertions do not see the accumulated effect of  repeated  post-
       ings to the same account within a transaction.)

       So, hledger balance assertions keep working if you reorder differently-
       dated transactions within the journal.  But if you  reorder  same-dated
       transactions  or postings, assertions might break and require updating.
       This order dependence does bring an advantage: precise control over the
       order of postings and assertions within a day, so you can assert intra-
       day balances.

   Assertions and included files
       With included files, things are a little more  complicated.   Including
       preserves  the ordering of postings and assertions.  If you have multi-
       ple postings to an account on the  same  day,  split  across  different
       files,  and  you  also want to assert the account's balance on the same
       day, you'll have to put the assertion in the right file.

   Assertions and multiple -f options
       Balance assertions don't work well across files specified with multiple
       -f options.  Use include or concatenate the files instead.

   Assertions and commodities
       The  asserted  balance must be a simple single-commodity amount, and in
       fact the assertion checks only  this  commodity's  balance  within  the
       (possibly  multi-commodity)  account  balance.   This is how assertions
       work in Ledger also.  We could call this a "partial" balance assertion.

       To assert the balance of more than one commodity in an account, you can
       write multiple postings, each asserting one commodity's balance.

       You  can  make a stronger "total" balance assertion by writing a double
       equals sign (== EXPECTEDBALANCE).  This asserts that there are no other
       unasserted commodities in the account (or, that their balance is 0).

              2013/1/1
                a   $1
                a    1EUR
                b  $-1
                c   -1EUR

              2013/1/2  ; These assertions succeed
                a    0  =  $1
                a    0  =   1EUR
                b    0 == $-1
                c    0 ==  -1EUR

              2013/1/3  ; This assertion fails as 'a' also contains 1EUR
                a    0 ==  $1

       It's not yet possible to make a complete assertion about a balance that
       has multiple commodities.  One workaround is to isolate each  commodity
       into its own subaccount:

              2013/1/1
                a:usd   $1
                a:euro   1EUR
                b

              2013/1/2
                a        0 ==  0
                a:usd    0 == $1
                a:euro   0 ==  1EUR

   Assertions and prices
       Balance  assertions  ignore  transaction prices, and should normally be
       written without one:

              2019/1/1
                (a)     $1 @ EUR1 = $1

       We do allow prices to be written there, however, and print shows  them,
       even  though  they  don't affect whether the assertion passes or fails.
       This is for backward compatibility (hledger's  close  command  used  to
       generate  balance  assertions with prices), and because balance assign-
       ments do use them (see below).

   Assertions and subaccounts
       The balance assertions above (= and ==) do not count the  balance  from
       subaccounts;  they check the account's exclusive balance only.  You can
       assert the balance including subaccounts by writing =* or ==*, eg:

              2019/1/1
                equity:opening balances
                checking:a       5
                checking:b       5
                checking         1  ==* 11

   Assertions and virtual postings
       Balance assertions are checked against all postings, both real and vir-
       tual.  They are not affected by the --real/-R flag or real: query.

   Assertions and precision
       Balance  assertions  compare  the exactly calculated amounts, which are
       not always what is shown by reports.   Eg  a  commodity  directive  may
       limit  the  display  precision, but this will not affect balance asser-
       tions.  Balance assertion failure messages show exact amounts.

   Balance assignments
       Ledger-style balance assignments are also supported.   These  are  like
       balance  assertions, but with no posting amount on the left side of the
       equals sign; instead it is calculated automatically so  as  to  satisfy
       the  assertion.   This  can be a convenience during data entry, eg when
       setting opening balances:

              ; starting a new journal, set asset account balances
              2016/1/1 opening balances
                assets:checking            = $409.32
                assets:savings             = $735.24
                assets:cash                 = $42
                equity:opening balances

       or when adjusting a balance to reality:

              ; no cash left; update balance, record any untracked spending as a generic expense
              2016/1/15
                assets:cash    = $0
                expenses:misc

       The calculated amount depends on the account's balance in the commodity
       at  that  point  (which depends on the previously-dated postings of the
       commodity to that account since the last balance assertion  or  assign-
       ment).  Note that using balance assignments makes your journal a little
       less explicit; to know the exact amount posted, you have to run hledger
       or do the calculations yourself, instead of just reading it.

   Balance assignments and prices
       A  transaction  price in a balance assignment will cause the calculated
       amount to have that price attached:

              2019/1/1
                (a)             = $1 @ EUR2

              $ hledger print --explicit
              2019-01-01
                  (a)         $1 @ EUR2 = $1 @ EUR2

   Directives
       A directive is a line in the journal beginning with a special  keyword,
       that influences how the journal is processed.  hledger's directives are
       based on a subset of Ledger's, but there are many differences (and also
       some differences between hledger versions).

       Directives' behaviour and interactions can get a little bit complex, so
       here is a table summarising the  directives  and  their  effects,  with
       links  to  more  detailed docs.  Note part of this table is hidden when
       viewed in a web browser - scroll it sideways to see more.

       direc-     end   di-   subdi-    purpose                        can affect  (as  of
       tive       rective     rec-                                     2018/06)
                              tives
       ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
       account                any       document account names,  de-   all entries in  all
                              text      clare  account  types & dis-   files,   before  or
                                        play order                     after
       alias      end                   rewrite account names          following   entries
                  aliases                                              until end  of  cur-
                                                                       rent  file  or  end
                                                                       directive
       apply      end apply             prepend a common  parent  to   following   entries
       account    account               account names                  until end  of  cur-
                                                                       rent  file  or  end
                                                                       directive
       comment    end  com-             ignore part of journal         following   entries
                  ment                                                 until end  of  cur-
                                                                       rent  file  or  end
                                                                       directive
       commod-                format    declare  a commodity and its   number    notation:
       ity                              number  notation  &  display   following   entries
                                        style                          in  that  commodity
                                                                       in all files ; dis-
                                                                       play style: amounts
                                                                       of  that  commodity
                                                                       in reports
       D                                declare  a  commodity  to be   default  commodity:
                                        used    for    commodityless   following   commod-
                                        amounts,  and its number no-   ityless entries un-
                                        tation & display style         til  end of current
                                                                       file; number  nota-
                                                                       tion: following en-
                                                                       tries in that  com-
                                                                       modity until end of
                                                                       current file;  dis-
                                                                       play style: amounts
                                                                       of  that  commodity
                                                                       in reports
       include                          include   entries/directives   what  the  included
                                        from another file              directives affect
       [payee]                          declare a payee name           following   entries
                                                                       until end  of  cur-
                                                                       rent file

       P                                declare a market price for a   amounts   of   that
                                        commodity                      commodity   in  re-
                                                                       ports, when  -V  is
                                                                       used
       Y                                declare  a year for yearless   following   entries
                                        dates                          until  end  of cur-
                                                                       rent file
       =                                declare  an   auto   posting   all entries in par-
                                        rule,   adding  postings  to   ent/current/child
                                        other transactions             files (but not sib-
                                                                       ling   files,   see
                                                                       #1212)

       And some definitions:

       subdi-   optional indented directive line immediately following a  parent
       rec-     directive
       tive
       number   how to interpret numbers when parsing journal entries (the iden-
       nota-    tity of the decimal separator character).  (Currently each  com-
       tion     modity can have its own notation, even in the same file.)
       dis-     how  to  display  amounts of a commodity in reports (symbol side
       play     and spacing, digit groups, decimal separator, decimal places)
       style
       direc-   which entries and (when there are multiple  files)  which  files
       tive     are affected by a directive
       scope

       As you can see, directives vary in which journal entries and files they
       affect, and whether they are focussed on input (parsing) or output (re-
       ports).  Some directives have multiple effects.

   Directives and multiple files
       If  you  use  multiple  -f/--file  options,  or  the include directive,
       hledger will process multiple input files.  But  note  that  directives
       which affect input (see above) typically last only until the end of the
       file in which they occur.

       This may seem inconvenient, but it's intentional; it makes reports sta-
       ble  and  deterministic,  independent of the order of input.  Otherwise
       you could see different numbers if you happened to write -f options  in
       a  different  order,  or if you moved includes around while cleaning up
       your files.

       It can be surprising though; for example, it means  that  alias  direc-
       tives do not affect parent or sibling files (see below).

   Comment blocks
       A  line  containing just comment starts a commented region of the file,
       and a line containing just end comment (or the end of the current file)
       ends it.  See also comments.

   Including other files
       You  can  pull in the content of additional files by writing an include
       directive, like this:

              include FILEPATH

       Only journal files can include, and only journal, timeclock or  timedot
       files can be included (not CSV files, currently).

       If  the  file  path  does not begin with a slash, it is relative to the
       current file's folder.

       A tilde means home directory, eg: include ~/main.journal.

       The path may contain glob patterns to match multiple files, eg: include
       *.journal.

       There is limited support for recursive wildcards: **/ (the slash is re-
       quired) matches 0 or more subdirectories.  It's  not  super  convenient
       since  you  have to avoid include cycles and including directories, but
       this can be done, eg: include */**/*.journal.

       The path may also be prefixed to force a specific file format, overrid-
       ing  the file extension (as described in hledger.1 -> Input files): in-
       clude timedot:~/notes/2020*.md.

   Default year
       You can set a default year to be used for subsequent dates which  don't
       specify  a year.  This is a line beginning with Y followed by the year.
       Eg:

              Y2009  ; set default year to 2009

              12/15  ; equivalent to 2009/12/15
                expenses  1
                assets

              Y2010  ; change default year to 2010

              2009/1/30  ; specifies the year, not affected
                expenses  1
                assets

              1/31   ; equivalent to 2010/1/31
                expenses  1
                assets

   Declaring payees
       The payee directive can be used to declare  a  limited  set  of  payees
       which  may appear in transaction descriptions.  The "payees" check will
       report an error if any transaction refers to a payee that has not  been
       declared.  Eg:

              payee Whole Foods

   Declaring commodities
       The commodity directive has several functions:

       1. It  declares  commodities which may be used in the journal.  This is
          currently not enforced, but can serve as documentation.

       2. It declares what decimal mark character (period or comma) to  expect
          when  parsing  input  -  useful to disambiguate international number
          formats in your data.  (Without this, hledger will parse both  1,000
          and 1.000 as 1).

       3. It  declares  a  commodity's  display  style in output - decimal and
          digit group marks, number of decimal places, symbol placement etc.

       You are likely to run into one of the problems solved by commodity  di-
       rectives,  sooner or later, so it's a good idea to just always use them
       to declare your commodities.

       A commodity directive is just the word commodity followed by an amount.
       It may be written on a single line, like this:

              ; commodity EXAMPLEAMOUNT

              ; display AAAA amounts with the symbol on the right, space-separated,
              ; using period as decimal point, with four decimal places, and
              ; separating thousands with comma.
              commodity 1,000.0000 AAAA

       or  on  multiple lines, using the "format" subdirective.  (In this case
       the commodity symbol appears twice and  should  be  the  same  in  both
       places.):

              ; commodity SYMBOL
              ;   format EXAMPLEAMOUNT

              ; display indian rupees with currency name on the left,
              ; thousands, lakhs and crores comma-separated,
              ; period as decimal point, and two decimal places.
              commodity INR
                format INR 1,00,00,000.00

       The quantity of the amount does not matter; only the format is signifi-
       cant.  The number must include a decimal mark: either  a  period  or  a
       comma, followed by 0 or more decimal digits.

       Note  hledger  normally  uses  banker's rounding, so 0.5 displayed with
       zero decimal digits is "0".  (More at Commodity display style.)

   Commodity error checking
       In strict mode, enabled with the -s/--strict flag, hledger will  report
       an  error if a commodity symbol is used that has not been declared by a
       commodity directive.  This works similarly to account  error  checking,
       see the notes there for more details.

   Default commodity
       The  D directive sets a default commodity, to be used for amounts with-
       out a commodity symbol (ie, plain numbers).  This commodity will be ap-
       plied to all subsequent commodity-less amounts, or until the next D di-
       rective.  (Note, this is different from Ledger's D.)

       For compatibility/historical reasons, D also acts like a commodity  di-
       rective, setting the commodity's display style (for output) and decimal
       mark (for parsing input).  As with commodity, the amount must always be
       written  with a decimal mark (period or comma).  If both directives are
       used, commodity's style takes precedence.

       The syntax is D AMOUNT.  Eg:

              ; commodity-less amounts should be treated as dollars
              ; (and displayed with the dollar sign on the left, thousands separators and two decimal places)
              D $1,000.00

              1/1
                a     5  ; <- commodity-less amount, parsed as $5 and displayed as $5.00
                b

   Declaring market prices
       The P directive declares a market price, which is an exchange rate  be-
       tween  two  commodities on a certain date.  (In Ledger, they are called
       "historical prices".) These are often obtained from a  stock  exchange,
       cryptocurrency exchange, or the foreign exchange market.

       Here is the format:

              P DATE COMMODITYA COMMODITYBAMOUNT

       o DATE is a simple date

       o COMMODITYA is the symbol of the commodity being priced

       o COMMODITYBAMOUNT  is an amount (symbol and quantity) in a second com-
         modity, giving the price in commodity B of one unit of commodity A.

       These two market price directives say that one euro was worth  1.35  US
       dollars during 2009, and $1.40 from 2010 onward:

              P 2009/1/1 EUR $1.35
              P 2010/1/1 EUR $1.40

       The  -V,  -X  and  --value flags use these market prices to show amount
       values in another commodity.  See Valuation.

   Declaring accounts
       account directives can be used to declare accounts (ie, the places that
       amounts  are transferred from and to).  Though not required, these dec-
       larations can provide several benefits:

       o They can document your intended chart of accounts, providing a refer-
         ence.

       o They  can  help  hledger know your accounts' types (asset, liability,
         equity, revenue, expense), useful for reports like  balancesheet  and
         incomestatement.

       o They  control  account  display order in reports, allowing non-alpha-
         betic sorting (eg Revenues to appear above Expenses).

       o They can store extra information  about  accounts  (account  numbers,
         notes, etc.)

       o They  help  with account name completion in the add command, hledger-
         iadd, hledger-web, ledger-mode etc.

       o In strict mode, they restrict which accounts  may  be  posted  to  by
         transactions, which helps detect typos.

       The  simplest form is just the word account followed by a hledger-style
       account name, eg this account directive declares the assets:bank:check-
       ing account:

              account assets:bank:checking

   Account error checking
       By  default, accounts come into existence when a transaction references
       them by name.  This is convenient, but it means hledger can't warn  you
       when you mis-spell an account name in the journal.  Usually you'll find
       the error later, as an extra account in balance reports, or  an  incor-
       rect balance when reconciling.

       In  strict mode, enabled with the -s/--strict flag, hledger will report
       an error if any transaction uses an account name that has not been  de-
       clared by an account directive.  Some notes:

       o The  declaration is case-sensitive; transactions must use the correct
         account name capitalisation.

       o The account directive's scope is "whole file and below"  (see  direc-
         tives).  This means it affects all of the current file, and any files
         it includes, but not parent or sibling files.  The  position  of  ac-
         count  directives  within the file does not matter, though it's usual
         to put them at the top.

       o Accounts can only be declared in journal files (but will  affect  in-
         cluded files in other formats).

       o It's  currently  not  possible  to declare "all possible subaccounts"
         with a wildcard; every account posted to must be declared.

   Account comments
       Comments, beginning with a semicolon, can be added:

       o on the same line, after two or more spaces (because ; is  allowed  in
         account names)

       o on the next lines, indented

       An example of both:

              account assets:bank:checking  ; same-line comment, note 2+ spaces before ;
                ; next-line comment
                ; another with tag, acctno:12345 (not used yet)

       Same-line comments are not supported by Ledger, or hledger <1.13.

   Account subdirectives
       We  also  allow  (and ignore) Ledger-style indented subdirectives, just
       for compatibility.:

              account assets:bank:checking
                format blah blah  ; <- subdirective, ignored

       Here is the full syntax of account directives:

              account ACCTNAME  [ACCTTYPE] [;COMMENT]
                [;COMMENTS]
                [LEDGER-STYLE SUBDIRECTIVES, IGNORED]

   Account types
       hledger recognises five main types of account, corresponding to the ac-
       count classes in the accounting equation:

       Asset, Liability, Equity, Revenue, Expense.

       These account types are important for controlling which accounts appear
       in the balancesheet, balancesheetequity, incomestatement  reports  (and
       probably for other things in future).

       Additionally,  we  recognise the Cash type, which is also an Asset, and
       which causes accounts to appear in the cashflow report.   ("Cash"  here
       means  liquid assets, eg bank balances but typically not investments or
       receivables.)

   Declaring account types
       Generally, to make these reports work you should declare your top-level
       accounts and their types, using account directives with type: tags.

       The  tag's  value  should be one of: Asset, Liability, Equity, Revenue,
       Expense, Cash, A, L, E, R, X, C (all case insensitive).   The  type  is
       inherited  by  all subaccounts except where they override it.  Here's a
       complete example:

              account assets       ; type: Asset
              account assets:bank  ; type: Cash
              account assets:cash  ; type: Cash
              account liabilities  ; type: Liability
              account equity       ; type: Equity
              account revenues     ; type: Revenue
              account expenses     ; type: Expense

   Auto-detected account types
       If you happen to use common english top-level account  names,  you  may
       not  need  to declare account types, as they will be detected automati-
       cally using the following rules:

       If  name  matches  regular   account type is:
       expression:
       ----------------------------------------------
       ^assets?(:|$)                Asset
       ^(debts?|lia-                Liability
       bilit(y|ies))(:|$)
       ^equity(:|$)                 Equity
       ^(income|revenue)s?(:|$)     Revenue
       ^expenses?(:|$)              Expense

       If account type is Asset and name does not contain  regu-   account  type
       lar expression:                                             is:
       --------------------------------------------------------------------------
       (investment|receivable|:A/R|:fixed)                         Cash

       Even so, explicit declarations may be a good idea, for clarity and pre-
       dictability.

   Interference from auto-detected account types
       If you assign any account type, it's a good idea to assign all of them,
       to prevent any confusion from mixing declared and auto-detected  types.
       Although  it's unlikely to happen in real life, here's an example: with
       the following journal, balancesheetequity shows "liabilities"  in  both
       Liabilities and Equity sections.  Declaring another account as type:Li-
       ability would fix it:

              account liabilities  ; type:Equity

              2020-01-01
                assets        1
                liabilities   1
                equity       -2

   Old account type syntax
       In some hledger journals you might instead see  this  old  syntax  (the
       letters  ALERX, separated from the account name by two or more spaces);
       this is deprecated and may be removed soon:

              account assets       A
              account liabilities  L
              account equity       E
              account revenues     R
              account expenses     X

   Account display order
       Account directives also set the order in which accounts are  displayed,
       eg  in  reports,  the  hledger-ui  accounts screen, and the hledger-web
       sidebar.  By default accounts are listed in alphabetical order.  But if
       you have these account directives in the journal:

              account assets
              account liabilities
              account equity
              account revenues
              account expenses

       you'll see those accounts displayed in declaration order, not alphabet-
       ically:

              $ hledger accounts -1
              assets
              liabilities
              equity
              revenues
              expenses

       Undeclared accounts, if any, are displayed last, in alphabetical order.

       Note that sorting is done at each level of  the  account  tree  (within
       each  group of sibling accounts under the same parent).  And currently,
       this directive:

              account other:zoo

       would influence the position of zoo among other's subaccounts, but  not
       the position of other among the top-level accounts.  This means:

       o you  will  sometimes declare parent accounts (eg account other above)
         that you don't intend to post to, just to customize their display or-
         der

       o sibling  accounts  stay together (you couldn't display x:y in between
         a:b and a:c).

   Rewriting accounts
       You can define account alias rules which rewrite your account names, or
       parts of them, before generating reports.  This can be useful for:

       o expanding shorthand account names to their full form, allowing easier
         data entry and a less verbose journal

       o adapting old journals to your current chart of accounts

       o experimenting with new account organisations, like a new hierarchy or
         combining two accounts into one

       o customising reports

       Account aliases also rewrite account names in account directives.  They
       do not affect account names being entered via hledger add  or  hledger-
       web.

       See also Rewrite account names.

   Basic aliases
       To  set an account alias, use the alias directive in your journal file.
       This affects all subsequent journal entries in the current file or  its
       included files.  The spaces around the = are optional:

              alias OLD = NEW

       Or, you can use the --alias 'OLD=NEW' option on the command line.  This
       affects all entries.  It's useful for trying out aliases interactively.

       OLD and NEW are case sensitive full account names.   hledger  will  re-
       place  any occurrence of the old account name with the new one.  Subac-
       counts are also affected.  Eg:

              alias checking = assets:bank:wells fargo:checking
              ; rewrites "checking" to "assets:bank:wells fargo:checking", or "checking:a" to "assets:bank:wells fargo:checking:a"

   Regex aliases
       There is also a more powerful variant that uses a  regular  expression,
       indicated by the forward slashes:

              alias /REGEX/ = REPLACEMENT

       or --alias '/REGEX/=REPLACEMENT'.

       REGEX  is  a  case-insensitive regular expression.  Anywhere it matches
       inside an account name, the matched part will be replaced  by  REPLACE-
       MENT.   If REGEX contains parenthesised match groups, these can be ref-
       erenced by the usual numeric backreferences in REPLACEMENT.  Eg:

              alias /^(.+):bank:([^:]+):(.*)/ = \1:\2 \3
              ; rewrites "assets:bank:wells fargo:checking" to  "assets:wells fargo checking"

       Also note that REPLACEMENT continues to the end of line (or on  command
       line,  to  end  of  option argument), so it can contain trailing white-
       space.

   Combining aliases
       You can define as many aliases as you like,  using  journal  directives
       and/or command line options.

       Recursive  aliases  -  where an account name is rewritten by one alias,
       then by another alias, and so on - are allowed.  Each  alias  sees  the
       effect of previously applied aliases.

       In  such  cases it can be important to understand which aliases will be
       applied and in which order.  For (each account name  in)  each  journal
       entry, we apply:

       1. alias  directives  preceding the journal entry, most recently parsed
          first (ie, reading upward from the journal entry, bottom to top)

       2. --alias options, in the order they  appeared  on  the  command  line
          (left to right).

       In other words, for (an account name in) a given journal entry:

       o the nearest alias declaration before/above the entry is applied first

       o the next alias before/above that will be be applied next, and so on

       o aliases defined after/below the entry do not affect it.

       This  gives nearby aliases precedence over distant ones, and helps pro-
       vide semantic stability - aliases will keep working the same way  inde-
       pendent of which files are being read and in which order.

       In  case  of  trouble,  adding  --debug=6 to the command line will show
       which aliases are being applied when.

   Aliases and multiple files
       As explained at Directives and multiple files, alias directives do  not
       affect parent or sibling files.  Eg in this command,

              hledger -f a.aliases -f b.journal

       account  aliases  defined  in a.aliases will not affect b.journal.  In-
       cluding the aliases doesn't work either:

              include a.aliases

              2020-01-01  ; not affected by a.aliases
                foo  1
                bar

       This means that account aliases should usually be declared at the start
       of your top-most file, like this:

              alias foo=Foo
              alias bar=Bar

              2020-01-01  ; affected by aliases above
                foo  1
                bar

              include c.journal  ; also affected

   end aliases
       You  can  clear  (forget)  all  currently  defined aliases with the end
       aliases directive:

              end aliases

   Default parent account
       You can specify a parent account which will be  prepended  to  all  ac-
       counts  within a section of the journal.  Use the apply account and end
       apply account directives like so:

              apply account home

              2010/1/1
                  food    $10
                  cash

              end apply account

       which is equivalent to:

              2010/01/01
                  home:food           $10
                  home:cash          $-10

       If end apply account is omitted, the effect lasts to  the  end  of  the
       file.  Included files are also affected, eg:

              apply account business
              include biz.journal
              end apply account
              apply account personal
              include personal.journal

       Prior  to  hledger 1.0, legacy account and end spellings were also sup-
       ported.

       A default parent account also affects account directives.  It does  not
       affect  account names being entered via hledger add or hledger-web.  If
       account aliases are present, they are applied after the default  parent
       account.

   Periodic transactions
       Periodic  transaction rules describe transactions that recur.  They al-
       low hledger to generate temporary  future  transactions  to  help  with
       forecasting,  so  you  don't have to write out each one in the journal,
       and it's easy to try out different forecasts.

       Periodic transactions can be a little tricky, so before you  use  them,
       read this whole section - or at least these tips:

       1. Two  spaces  accidentally  added or omitted will cause you trouble -
          read about this below.

       2. For troubleshooting, show the generated  transactions  with  hledger
          print   --forecast  tag:generated  or  hledger  register  --forecast
          tag:generated.

       3. Forecasted transactions will begin only  after  the  last  non-fore-
          casted transaction's date.

       4. Forecasted  transactions  will  end 6 months from today, by default.
          See below for the exact start/end rules.

       5. period expressions can be tricky.   Their  documentation  needs  im-
          provement, but is worth studying.

       6. Some  period  expressions  with a repeating interval must begin on a
          natural boundary of that interval.  Eg in  weekly  from  DATE,  DATE
          must  be a monday.  ~ weekly from 2019/10/1 (a tuesday) will give an
          error.

       7. Other period expressions with an interval are automatically expanded
          to  cover a whole number of that interval.  (This is done to improve
          reports, but it also affects periodic transactions.  Yes, it's a bit
          inconsistent  with  the  above.)  Eg: ~ every 10th day of month from
          2020/01, which is equivalent to ~  every  10th  day  of  month  from
          2020/01/01, will be adjusted to start on 2019/12/10.

       Periodic transaction rules also have a second meaning: they are used to
       define budget goals, shown in budget reports.

   Periodic rule syntax
       A periodic transaction rule looks like a normal journal entry, with the
       date replaced by a tilde (~) followed by a period expression (mnemonic:
       ~ looks like a recurring sine wave.):

              ~ monthly
                  expenses:rent          $2000
                  assets:bank:checking

       There is an additional constraint on the period expression:  the  start
       date  must fall on a natural boundary of the interval.  Eg monthly from
       2018/1/1 is valid, but monthly from 2018/1/15 is not.

       Partial or relative dates (M/D, D, tomorrow, last week) in  the  period
       expression  can work (useful or not).  They will be relative to today's
       date, unless a Y default year directive is in  effect,  in  which  case
       they will be relative to Y/1/1.

   Two spaces between period expression and description!
       If  the  period  expression  is  followed by a transaction description,
       these must be separated by two or more spaces.  This helps hledger know
       where the period expression ends, so that descriptions can not acciden-
       tally alter their meaning, as in this example:

              ; 2 or more spaces needed here, so the period is not understood as "every 2 months in 2020"
              ;               ||
              ;               vv
              ~ every 2 months  in 2020, we will review
                  assets:bank:checking   $1500
                  income:acme inc

       So,

       o Do write two spaces between your period expression and your  transac-
         tion description, if any.

       o Don't  accidentally write two spaces in the middle of your period ex-
         pression.

   Forecasting with periodic transactions
       The --forecast flag activates any periodic  transaction  rules  in  the
       journal.   They  will  generate temporary recurring transactions, which
       are not saved in the journal,  but  will  appear  in  all  reports  (eg
       print).  This can be useful for estimating balances into the future, or
       experimenting with different scenarios.  Or, it can be used as  a  data
       entry aid: describe recurring transactions, and every so often copy the
       output of print --forecast into the journal.

       These transactions will have an extra  tag  indicating  which  periodic
       rule generated them: generated-transaction:~ PERIODICEXPR.  And a simi-
       lar, hidden tag (beginning with  an  underscore)  which,  because  it's
       never  displayed  by print, can be used to match transactions generated
       "just now": _generated-transaction:~ PERIODICEXPR.

       Periodic transactions are generated within some  forecast  period.   By
       default, this

       o begins on the later of

         o the report start date if specified with -b/-p/date:

         o the  day  after the latest normal (non-periodic) transaction in the
           journal, or today if there are no normal transactions.

       o ends on the report end date  if  specified  with  -e/-p/date:,  or  6
         months (180 days) from today.

       This  means that periodic transactions will begin only after the latest
       recorded transaction.  And a recorded transaction dated in  the  future
       can  prevent  generation of periodic transactions.  (You can avoid that
       by writing the future transaction as a one-time periodic rule instead -
       put tilde before the date, eg ~ YYYY-MM-DD ...).

       Or, you can set your own arbitrary "forecast period", which can overlap
       recorded transactions, and need not be in the future, by  providing  an
       option  argument,  like --forecast=PERIODEXPR.  Note the equals sign is
       required, a space won't work.  PERIODEXPR is a period expression, which
       can  specify  the start date, end date, or both, like in a date: query.
       (See also hledger.1 ->  Report  start  &  end  date).   Some  examples:
       --forecast=202001-202004, --forecast=jan-, --forecast=2020.

   Budgeting with periodic transactions
       With  the  --budget  flag,  currently supported by the balance command,
       each periodic transaction rule declares recurring budget goals for  the
       specified  accounts.   Eg  the  first  example above declares a goal of
       spending $2000 on rent (and also,  a  goal  of  depositing  $2000  into
       checking)  every  month.  Goals and actual performance can then be com-
       pared in budget reports.

       See also: Budgeting and Forecasting.

   Auto postings
       "Automated postings" or "auto postings" are extra  postings  which  get
       added  automatically  to  transactions which match certain queries, de-
       fined by "auto posting rules", when you use the --auto flag.

       An auto posting rule looks a bit like a transaction:

              = QUERY
                  ACCOUNT  AMOUNT
                  ...
                  ACCOUNT  [AMOUNT]

       except the first line is an equals sign (mnemonic:  =  suggests  match-
       ing),  followed  by a query (which matches existing postings), and each
       "posting" line describes a posting to be  generated,  and  the  posting
       amounts can be:

       o a  normal  amount  with a commodity symbol, eg $2.  This will be used
         as-is.

       o a number, eg 2.  The commodity symbol (if any) from the matched post-
         ing will be added to this.

       o a  numeric  multiplier,  eg  *2 (a star followed by a number N).  The
         matched posting's amount (and total price, if any) will be multiplied
         by N.

       o a  multiplier  with a commodity symbol, eg *$2 (a star, number N, and
         symbol S).  The matched posting's amount will be multiplied by N, and
         its commodity symbol will be replaced with S.

       Any  query  term containing spaces must be enclosed in single or double
       quotes, as on the command line.  Eg, note the quotes around the  second
       query term below:

              = expenses:groceries 'expenses:dining out'
                  (budget:funds:dining out)                 *-1

       Some examples:

              ; every time I buy food, schedule a dollar donation
              = expenses:food
                  (liabilities:charity)   $-1

              ; when I buy a gift, also deduct that amount from a budget envelope subaccount
              = expenses:gifts
                  assets:checking:gifts  *-1
                  assets:checking         *1

              2017/12/1
                expenses:food    $10
                assets:checking

              2017/12/14
                expenses:gifts   $20
                assets:checking

              $ hledger print --auto
              2017-12-01
                  expenses:food              $10
                  assets:checking
                  (liabilities:charity)      $-1

              2017-12-14
                  expenses:gifts             $20
                  assets:checking
                  assets:checking:gifts     -$20
                  assets:checking            $20

   Auto postings and multiple files
       An auto posting rule can affect any transaction in the current file, or
       in any parent file or child file.  Note, currently it will  not  affect
       sibling files (when multiple -f/--file are used - see #1212).

   Auto postings and dates
       A  posting  date (or secondary date) in the matched posting, or (taking
       precedence) a posting date in the auto posting rule itself,  will  also
       be used in the generated posting.

   Auto postings and transaction balancing / inferred amounts / balance asser-
       tions
       Currently, auto postings are added:

       o after missing amounts are inferred, and transactions are checked  for
         balancedness,

       o but before balance assertions are checked.

       Note  this  means that journal entries must be balanced both before and
       after auto postings are added.  This changed in hledger 1.12+; see #893
       for background.

   Auto posting tags
       Automated postings will have some extra tags:

       o generated-posting:= QUERY - shows this was generated by an auto post-
         ing rule, and the query

       o _generated-posting:= QUERY - a hidden tag, which does not  appear  in
         hledger's output.  This can be used to match postings generated "just
         now", rather than generated in the past and saved to the journal.

       Also, any transaction that has been changed by auto posting rules  will
       have these tags added:

       o modified: - this transaction was modified

       o _modified: - a hidden tag not appearing in the comment; this transac-
         tion was modified "just now".

CSV FORMAT
       How hledger reads CSV data, and the CSV rules file format.

       hledger can read CSV files (Character Separated Value - usually  comma,
       semicolon,  or  tab)  containing  dated records as if they were journal
       files, automatically converting each CSV record into a transaction.

       (To learn about writing CSV, see CSV output.)

       We describe each CSV file's format with a corresponding rules file.  By
       default  this is named like the CSV file with a .rules extension added.
       Eg when reading FILE.csv, hledger also looks for FILE.csv.rules in  the
       same  directory  as  FILE.csv.   You can specify a different rules file
       with the --rules-file option.  If a rules file is  not  found,  hledger
       will create a sample rules file, which you'll need to adjust.

       This  file  contains rules describing the CSV data (header line, fields
       layout, date format etc.), and how to construct hledger journal entries
       (transactions) from it.  Often there will also be a list of conditional
       rules  for  categorising  transactions  based  on  their  descriptions.
       Here's an overview of the CSV rules; these are described more fully be-
       low, after the examples:

       skip                             skip one or more header lines or matched
                                        CSV records
       fields                           name  CSV fields, assign them to hledger
                                        fields
       field assignment                 assign a value  to  one  hledger  field,
                                        with interpolation
       separator                        a custom field separator
       if block                         apply  some rules to CSV records matched
                                        by patterns
       if table                         apply some rules to CSV records  matched
                                        by patterns, alternate syntax
       end                              skip the remaining CSV records
       date-format                      how to parse dates in CSV records
       decimal-mark                     the decimal mark used in CSV amounts, if
                                        ambiguous
       newest-first                     disambiguate record order  when  there's
                                        only one date
       include                          inline another CSV rules file
       balance-type                     choose which type of balance assignments
                                        to use

       Note, for best error messages when reading CSV files, use a .csv,  .tsv
       or .ssv file extension or file prefix - see File Extension below.

       There's an introductory Convert CSV files tutorial on hledger.org.

   Examples
       Here  are  some sample hledger CSV rules files.  See also the full col-
       lection at:
       https://github.com/simonmichael/hledger/tree/master/examples/csv

   Basic
       At minimum, the rules file must identify the date  and  amount  fields,
       and  often  it also specifies the date format and how many header lines
       there are.  Here's a simple CSV file and a rules file for it:

              Date, Description, Id, Amount
              12/11/2019, Foo, 123, 10.23

              # basic.csv.rules
              skip         1
              fields       date, description, _, amount
              date-format  %d/%m/%Y

              $ hledger print -f basic.csv
              2019-11-12 Foo
                  expenses:unknown           10.23
                  income:unknown            -10.23

       Default account names are chosen, since we didn't set them.

   Bank of Ireland
       Here's a CSV with two amount fields (Debit and Credit), and  a  balance
       field,  which we can use to add balance assertions, which is not neces-
       sary but provides extra error checking:

              Date,Details,Debit,Credit,Balance
              07/12/2012,LODGMENT       529898,,10.0,131.21
              07/12/2012,PAYMENT,5,,126

              # bankofireland-checking.csv.rules

              # skip the header line
              skip

              # name the csv fields, and assign some of them as journal entry fields
              fields  date, description, amount-out, amount-in, balance

              # We generate balance assertions by assigning to "balance"
              # above, but you may sometimes need to remove these because:
              #
              # - the CSV balance differs from the true balance,
              #   by up to 0.0000000000005 in my experience
              #
              # - it is sometimes calculated based on non-chronological ordering,
              #   eg when multiple transactions clear on the same day

              # date is in UK/Ireland format
              date-format  %d/%m/%Y

              # set the currency
              currency  EUR

              # set the base account for all txns
              account1  assets:bank:boi:checking

              $ hledger -f bankofireland-checking.csv print
              2012-12-07 LODGMENT       529898
                  assets:bank:boi:checking         EUR10.0 = EUR131.2
                  income:unknown                  EUR-10.0

              2012-12-07 PAYMENT
                  assets:bank:boi:checking         EUR-5.0 = EUR126.0
                  expenses:unknown                  EUR5.0

       The balance assertions don't raise an error above, because we're  read-
       ing  directly  from  CSV, but they will be checked if these entries are
       imported into a journal file.

   Amazon
       Here we convert amazon.com order history, and use an if block to gener-
       ate  a third posting if there's a fee.  (In practice you'd probably get
       this data from your bank instead, but it's an example.)

              "Date","Type","To/From","Name","Status","Amount","Fees","Transaction ID"
              "Jul 29, 2012","Payment","To","Foo.","Completed","$20.00","$0.00","16000000000000DGLNJPI1P9B8DKPVHL"
              "Jul 30, 2012","Payment","To","Adapteva, Inc.","Completed","$25.00","$1.00","17LA58JSKRD4HDGLNJPI1P9B8DKPVHL"

              # amazon-orders.csv.rules

              # skip one header line
              skip 1

              # name the csv fields, and assign the transaction's date, amount and code.
              # Avoided the "status" and "amount" hledger field names to prevent confusion.
              fields date, _, toorfrom, name, amzstatus, amzamount, fees, code

              # how to parse the date
              date-format %b %-d, %Y

              # combine two fields to make the description
              description %toorfrom %name

              # save the status as a tag
              comment     status:%amzstatus

              # set the base account for all transactions
              account1    assets:amazon
              # leave amount1 blank so it can balance the other(s).
              # I'm assuming amzamount excludes the fees, don't remember

              # set a generic account2
              account2    expenses:misc
              amount2     %amzamount
              # and maybe refine it further:
              #include categorisation.rules

              # add a third posting for fees, but only if they are non-zero.
              if %fees [1-9]
               account3    expenses:fees
               amount3     %fees

              $ hledger -f amazon-orders.csv print
              2012-07-29 (16000000000000DGLNJPI1P9B8DKPVHL) To Foo.  ; status:Completed
                  assets:amazon
                  expenses:misc          $20.00

              2012-07-30 (17LA58JSKRD4HDGLNJPI1P9B8DKPVHL) To Adapteva, Inc.  ; status:Completed
                  assets:amazon
                  expenses:misc          $25.00
                  expenses:fees           $1.00

   Paypal
       Here's a real-world rules file for (customised) Paypal CSV,  with  some
       Paypal-specific rules, and a second rules file included:

              "Date","Time","TimeZone","Name","Type","Status","Currency","Gross","Fee","Net","From Email Address","To Email Address","Transaction ID","Item Title","Item ID","Reference Txn ID","Receipt ID","Balance","Note"
              "10/01/2019","03:46:20","PDT","Calm Radio","Subscription Payment","Completed","USD","-6.99","0.00","-6.99","simon@joyful.com","memberships@calmradio.com","60P57143A8206782E","MONTHLY - $1 for the first 2 Months: Me - Order 99309. Item total: $1.00 USD first 2 months, then $6.99 / Month","","I-R8YLY094FJYR","","-6.99",""
              "10/01/2019","03:46:20","PDT","","Bank Deposit to PP Account ","Pending","USD","6.99","0.00","6.99","","simon@joyful.com","0TU1544T080463733","","","60P57143A8206782E","","0.00",""
              "10/01/2019","08:57:01","PDT","Patreon","PreApproved Payment Bill User Payment","Completed","USD","-7.00","0.00","-7.00","simon@joyful.com","support@patreon.com","2722394R5F586712G","Patreon* Membership","","B-0PG93074E7M86381M","","-7.00",""
              "10/01/2019","08:57:01","PDT","","Bank Deposit to PP Account ","Pending","USD","7.00","0.00","7.00","","simon@joyful.com","71854087RG994194F","Patreon* Membership","","2722394R5F586712G","","0.00",""
              "10/19/2019","03:02:12","PDT","Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.","Subscription Payment","Completed","USD","-2.00","0.00","-2.00","simon@joyful.com","tle@wikimedia.org","K9U43044RY432050M","Monthly donation to the Wikimedia Foundation","","I-R5C3YUS3285L","","-2.00",""
              "10/19/2019","03:02:12","PDT","","Bank Deposit to PP Account ","Pending","USD","2.00","0.00","2.00","","simon@joyful.com","3XJ107139A851061F","","","K9U43044RY432050M","","0.00",""
              "10/22/2019","05:07:06","PDT","Noble Benefactor","Subscription Payment","Completed","USD","10.00","-0.59","9.41","noble@bene.fac.tor","simon@joyful.com","6L8L1662YP1334033","Joyful Systems","","I-KC9VBGY2GWDB","","9.41",""

              # paypal-custom.csv.rules

              # Tips:
              # Export from Activity -> Statements -> Custom -> Activity download
              # Suggested transaction type: "Balance affecting"
              # Paypal's default fields in 2018 were:
              # "Date","Time","TimeZone","Name","Type","Status","Currency","Gross","Fee","Net","From Email Address","To Email Address","Transaction ID","Shipping Address","Address Status","Item Title","Item ID","Shipping and Handling Amount","Insurance Amount","Sales Tax","Option 1 Name","Option 1 Value","Option 2 Name","Option 2 Value","Reference Txn ID","Invoice Number","Custom Number","Quantity","Receipt ID","Balance","Address Line 1","Address Line 2/District/Neighborhood","Town/City","State/Province/Region/County/Territory/Prefecture/Republic","Zip/Postal Code","Country","Contact Phone Number","Subject","Note","Country Code","Balance Impact"
              # This rules file assumes the following more detailed fields, configured in "Customize report fields":
              # "Date","Time","TimeZone","Name","Type","Status","Currency","Gross","Fee","Net","From Email Address","To Email Address","Transaction ID","Item Title","Item ID","Reference Txn ID","Receipt ID","Balance","Note"

              fields date, time, timezone, description_, type, status_, currency, grossamount, feeamount, netamount, fromemail, toemail, code, itemtitle, itemid, referencetxnid, receiptid, balance, note

              skip  1

              date-format  %-m/%-d/%Y

              # ignore some paypal events
              if
              In Progress
              Temporary Hold
              Update to
               skip

              # add more fields to the description
              description %description_ %itemtitle

              # save some other fields as tags
              comment  itemid:%itemid, fromemail:%fromemail, toemail:%toemail, time:%time, type:%type, status:%status_

              # convert to short currency symbols
              if %currency USD
               currency $
              if %currency EUR
               currency E
              if %currency GBP
               currency P

              # generate postings

              # the first posting will be the money leaving/entering my paypal account
              # (negative means leaving my account, in all amount fields)
              account1 assets:online:paypal
              amount1  %netamount

              # the second posting will be money sent to/received from other party
              # (account2 is set below)
              amount2  -%grossamount

              # if there's a fee, add a third posting for the money taken by paypal.
              if %feeamount [1-9]
               account3 expenses:banking:paypal
               amount3  -%feeamount
               comment3 business:

              # choose an account for the second posting

              # override the default account names:
              # if the amount is positive, it's income (a debit)
              if %grossamount ^[^-]
               account2 income:unknown
              # if negative, it's an expense (a credit)
              if %grossamount ^-
               account2 expenses:unknown

              # apply common rules for setting account2 & other tweaks
              include common.rules

              # apply some overrides specific to this csv

              # Transfers from/to bank. These are usually marked Pending,
              # which can be disregarded in this case.
              if
              Bank Account
              Bank Deposit to PP Account
               description %type for %referencetxnid %itemtitle
               account2 assets:bank:wf:pchecking
               account1 assets:online:paypal

              # Currency conversions
              if Currency Conversion
               account2 equity:currency conversion

              # common.rules

              if
              darcs
              noble benefactor
               account2 revenues:foss donations:darcshub
               comment2 business:

              if
              Calm Radio
               account2 expenses:online:apps

              if
              electronic frontier foundation
              Patreon
              wikimedia
              Advent of Code
               account2 expenses:dues

              if Google
               account2 expenses:online:apps
               description google | music

              $ hledger -f paypal-custom.csv  print
              2019-10-01 (60P57143A8206782E) Calm Radio MONTHLY - $1 for the first 2 Months: Me - Order 99309. Item total: $1.00 USD first 2 months, then $6.99 / Month  ; itemid:, fromemail:simon@joyful.com, toemail:memberships@calmradio.com, time:03:46:20, type:Subscription Payment, status:Completed
                  assets:online:paypal          $-6.99 = $-6.99
                  expenses:online:apps           $6.99

              2019-10-01 (0TU1544T080463733) Bank Deposit to PP Account for 60P57143A8206782E  ; itemid:, fromemail:, toemail:simon@joyful.com, time:03:46:20, type:Bank Deposit to PP Account, status:Pending
                  assets:online:paypal               $6.99 = $0.00
                  assets:bank:wf:pchecking          $-6.99

              2019-10-01 (2722394R5F586712G) Patreon Patreon* Membership  ; itemid:, fromemail:simon@joyful.com, toemail:support@patreon.com, time:08:57:01, type:PreApproved Payment Bill User Payment, status:Completed
                  assets:online:paypal          $-7.00 = $-7.00
                  expenses:dues                  $7.00

              2019-10-01 (71854087RG994194F) Bank Deposit to PP Account for 2722394R5F586712G Patreon* Membership  ; itemid:, fromemail:, toemail:simon@joyful.com, time:08:57:01, type:Bank Deposit to PP Account, status:Pending
                  assets:online:paypal               $7.00 = $0.00
                  assets:bank:wf:pchecking          $-7.00

              2019-10-19 (K9U43044RY432050M) Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Monthly donation to the Wikimedia Foundation  ; itemid:, fromemail:simon@joyful.com, toemail:tle@wikimedia.org, time:03:02:12, type:Subscription Payment, status:Completed
                  assets:online:paypal             $-2.00 = $-2.00
                  expenses:dues                     $2.00
                  expenses:banking:paypal      ; business:

              2019-10-19 (3XJ107139A851061F) Bank Deposit to PP Account for K9U43044RY432050M  ; itemid:, fromemail:, toemail:simon@joyful.com, time:03:02:12, type:Bank Deposit to PP Account, status:Pending
                  assets:online:paypal               $2.00 = $0.00
                  assets:bank:wf:pchecking          $-2.00

              2019-10-22 (6L8L1662YP1334033) Noble Benefactor Joyful Systems  ; itemid:, fromemail:noble@bene.fac.tor, toemail:simon@joyful.com, time:05:07:06, type:Subscription Payment, status:Completed
                  assets:online:paypal                       $9.41 = $9.41
                  revenues:foss donations:darcshub         $-10.00  ; business:
                  expenses:banking:paypal                    $0.59  ; business:

   CSV rules
       The following kinds of rule can appear in the rules file, in any order.
       Blank lines and lines beginning with # or ; are ignored.

   skip
              skip N

       The word "skip" followed by a number (or no number,  meaning  1)  tells
       hledger  to  ignore  this  many non-empty lines preceding the CSV data.
       (Empty/blank lines are skipped automatically.) You'll need  this  when-
       ever your CSV data contains header lines.

       It also has a second purpose: it can be used inside if blocks to ignore
       certain CSV records (described below).

   fields
              fields FIELDNAME1, FIELDNAME2, ...

       A fields list (the word  "fields"  followed  by  comma-separated  field
       names)  is  the quick way to assign CSV field values to hledger fields.
       It does two things:

       1. it names the CSV fields.  This is optional, but  can  be  convenient
          later for interpolating them.

       2. when you use a standard hledger field name, it assigns the CSV value
          to that part of the hledger transaction.

       Here's an example that says "use the 1st, 2nd and  4th  fields  as  the
       transaction's  date,  description  and amount; name the last two fields
       for later reference; and ignore the others":

              fields date, description, , amount, , , somefield, anotherfield

       Field names may not contain whitespace.  Fields you  don't  care  about
       can  be  left  unnamed.  Currently there must be least two items (there
       must be at least one comma).

       Note, always use comma in the fields list, even if your  CSV  uses  an-
       other separator character.

       Here are the standard hledger field/pseudo-field names.  For more about
       the transaction parts they refer to, see the manual for hledger's jour-
       nal format.

   Transaction field names
       date, date2, status, code, description, comment can be used to form the
       transaction's first line.

   Posting field names
   account
       accountN, where N is 1 to 99, causes a posting to  be  generated,  with
       that account name.

       Most  often  there are two postings, so you'll want to set account1 and
       account2.  Typically account1 is associated with the CSV file,  and  is
       set  once  with  a top-level assignment, while account2 is set based on
       each transaction's description, and in conditional blocks.

       If a posting's account name is left unset but its amount  is  set  (see
       below),  a default account name will be chosen (like "expenses:unknown"
       or "income:unknown").

   amount
       amountN sets posting N's amount.  If the CSV uses separate  fields  for
       inflows  and  outflows, you can use amountN-in and amountN-out instead.
       By assigning to amount1, amount2, ...  etc.  you can generate  anywhere
       from 0 to 99 postings.

       There  is  also  an older, unnumbered form of these names, suitable for
       2-posting transactions, which sets both posting 1's and (negated) post-
       ing  2's  amount:  amount,  or amount-in and amount-out.  This is still
       supported because it keeps pre-hledger-1.17 csv  rules  files  working,
       and  because  it  can be more succinct, and because it converts posting
       2's amount to cost if there's a transaction price, which can be useful.

       If you have an existing rules file using the unnumbered form, you might
       want  to  use  the numbered form in certain conditional blocks, without
       having to update and retest all the old  rules.   To  facilitate  this,
       posting    1    ignores    amount/amount-in/amount-out    if   any   of
       amount1/amount1-in/amount1-out are assigned, and posting 2 ignores them
       if  any  of  amount2/amount2-in/amount2-out are assigned, avoiding con-
       flicts.

   currency
       If the CSV has the currency symbol in a separate field (ie, not part of
       the  amount  field), you can use currencyN to prepend it to posting N's
       amount.  Or, currency with no number affects all postings.

   balance
       balanceN sets a balance assertion amount (or if the posting  amount  is
       left empty, a balance assignment) on posting N.

       Also,  for  compatibility with hledger <1.17: balance with no number is
       equivalent to balance1.

       You can adjust the type of assertion/assignment with  the  balance-type
       rule (see below).

   comment
       Finally, commentN sets a comment on the Nth posting.  Comments can also
       contain tags, as usual.

       See TIPS below for more about setting amounts and currency.

   field assignment
              HLEDGERFIELDNAME FIELDVALUE

       Instead of or in addition to a fields list, you can use  a  "field  as-
       signment"  rule  to set the value of a single hledger field, by writing
       its name (any of the standard hledger field names above) followed by  a
       text  value.  The value may contain interpolated CSV fields, referenced
       by their 1-based position in the CSV record (%N), or by the  name  they
       were given in the fields list (%CSVFIELDNAME).  Some examples:

              # set the amount to the 4th CSV field, with " USD" appended
              amount %4 USD

              # combine three fields to make a comment, containing note: and date: tags
              comment note: %somefield - %anotherfield, date: %1

       Interpolation  strips  outer  whitespace (so a CSV value like " 1 " be-
       comes 1 when interpolated) (#1051).  See TIPS below for more about ref-
       erencing other fields.

   separator
       You  can  use the separator rule to read other kinds of character-sepa-
       rated data.  The argument is any single  separator  character,  or  the
       words  tab or space (case insensitive).  Eg, for comma-separated values
       (CSV):

              separator ,

       or for semicolon-separated values (SSV):

              separator ;

       or for tab-separated values (TSV):

              separator TAB

       If the input file has a .csv, .ssv or .tsv file extension (or  a  csv:,
       ssv:, tsv: prefix), the appropriate separator will be inferred automat-
       ically, and you won't need this rule.

   if block
              if MATCHER
               RULE

              if
              MATCHER
              MATCHER
              MATCHER
               RULE
               RULE

       Conditional blocks ("if blocks") are a block of rules that are  applied
       only  to CSV records which match certain patterns.  They are often used
       for customising account names based on transaction descriptions.

   Matching the whole record
       Each MATCHER can be a record matcher, which looks like this:

              REGEX

       REGEX is a case-insensitive regular expression  which  tries  to  match
       anywhere  within  the  CSV record.  It is a POSIX ERE (extended regular
       expression) that also supports GNU word boundaries (\b,  \B,  \<,  \>),
       and  nothing  else.   If  you  have  trouble,  be  sure  to  check  our
       https://hledger.org/hledger.html#regular-expressions doc.

       Important note: the record that is matched is not the original  record,
       but  a synthetic one, with any enclosing double quotes (but not enclos-
       ing whitespace) removed, and always comma-separated (which means that a
       field  containing  a  comma  will  appear like two fields).  Eg, if the
       original record is 2020-01-01; "Acme, Inc.";  1,000, the REGEX will ac-
       tually see 2020-01-01,Acme, Inc.,  1,000).

   Matching individual fields
       Or, MATCHER can be a field matcher, like this:

              %CSVFIELD REGEX

       which  matches just the content of a particular CSV field.  CSVFIELD is
       a percent sign followed by the field's  name  or  column  number,  like
       %date or %1.

   Combining matchers
       A single matcher can be written on the same line as the "if"; or multi-
       ple matchers can be written on the following lines, non-indented.  Mul-
       tiple  matchers are OR'd (any one of them can match), unless one begins
       with an & symbol, in which case it is AND'ed with the previous matcher.

              if
              MATCHER
              & MATCHER
               RULE

   Rules applied on successful match
       After the patterns there should be one or more rules to apply, all  in-
       dented  by at least one space.  Three kinds of rule are allowed in con-
       ditional blocks:

       o field assignments (to set a hledger field)

       o skip (to skip the matched CSV record)

       o end (to skip all remaining CSV records).

       Examples:

              # if the CSV record contains "groceries", set account2 to "expenses:groceries"
              if groceries
               account2 expenses:groceries

              # if the CSV record contains any of these patterns, set account2 and comment as shown
              if
              monthly service fee
              atm transaction fee
              banking thru software
               account2 expenses:business:banking
               comment  XXX deductible ? check it

   if table
              if,CSVFIELDNAME1,CSVFIELDNAME2,...,CSVFIELDNAMEn
              MATCHER1,VALUE11,VALUE12,...,VALUE1n
              MATCHER2,VALUE21,VALUE22,...,VALUE2n
              MATCHER3,VALUE31,VALUE32,...,VALUE3n
              <empty line>

       Conditional tables ("if tables") are  a  different  syntax  to  specify
       field  assignments that will be applied only to CSV records which match
       certain patterns.

       MATCHER could be either field or record matcher,  as  described  above.
       When MATCHER matches, values from that row would be assigned to the CSV
       fields named on the if line, in the same order.

       Therefore if table is exactly equivalent to a sequence of of if blocks:

              if MATCHER1
                CSVFIELDNAME1 VALUE11
                CSVFIELDNAME2 VALUE12
                ...
                CSVFIELDNAMEn VALUE1n

              if MATCHER2
                CSVFIELDNAME1 VALUE21
                CSVFIELDNAME2 VALUE22
                ...
                CSVFIELDNAMEn VALUE2n

              if MATCHER3
                CSVFIELDNAME1 VALUE31
                CSVFIELDNAME2 VALUE32
                ...
                CSVFIELDNAMEn VALUE3n

       Each line starting with MATCHER should contain enough (possibly  empty)
       values for all the listed fields.

       Rules  would be checked and applied in the order they are listed in the
       table and, like with if blocks, later rules (in the same or another ta-
       ble) or if blocks could override the effect of any rule.

       Instead  of ',' you can use a variety of other non-alphanumeric charac-
       ters as a separator.  First character after if is taken to be the sepa-
       rator  for the rest of the table.  It is the responsibility of the user
       to ensure that separator does not occur inside MATCHERs  and  values  -
       there is no way to escape separator.

       Example:

              if,account2,comment
              atm transaction fee,expenses:business:banking,deductible? check it
              %description groceries,expenses:groceries,
              2020/01/12.*Plumbing LLC,expenses:house:upkeep,emergency plumbing call-out

   end
       This  rule  can  be  used inside if blocks (only), to make hledger stop
       reading this CSV file and move on to the next input file, or to command
       execution.  Eg:

              # ignore everything following the first empty record
              if ,,,,
               end

   date-format
              date-format DATEFMT

       This  is  a  helper for the date (and date2) fields.  If your CSV dates
       are not formatted like YYYY-MM-DD,  YYYY/MM/DD  or  YYYY.MM.DD,  you'll
       need  to  add  a  date-format rule describing them with a strptime date
       parsing pattern, which must parse the CSV date value completely.   Some
       examples:

              # MM/DD/YY
              date-format %m/%d/%y

              # D/M/YYYY
              # The - makes leading zeros optional.
              date-format %-d/%-m/%Y

              # YYYY-Mmm-DD
              date-format %Y-%h-%d

              # M/D/YYYY HH:MM AM some other junk
              # Note the time and junk must be fully parsed, though only the date is used.
              date-format %-m/%-d/%Y %l:%M %p some other junk

       For the supported strptime syntax, see:
       https://hackage.haskell.org/package/time/docs/Data-Time-For-
       mat.html#v:formatTime

   decimal-mark
              decimal-mark .

       or:

              decimal-mark ,

       hledger automatically accepts either period or comma as a decimal  mark
       when  parsing  numbers (cf Amounts).  However if any numbers in the CSV
       contain digit group marks,  such  as  thousand-separating  commas,  you
       should  declare  the  decimal  mark explicitly with this rule, to avoid
       misparsed numbers.

   newest-first
       hledger always sorts the generated transactions by date.   Transactions
       on  the same date should appear in the same order as their CSV records,
       as hledger can usually auto-detect whether the CSV's  normal  order  is
       oldest first or newest first.  But if all of the following are true:

       o the  CSV  might  sometimes  contain just one day of data (all records
         having the same date)

       o the CSV records are normally in reverse chronological  order  (newest
         at the top)

       o and you care about preserving the order of same-day transactions

       then, you should add the newest-first rule as a hint.  Eg:

              # tell hledger explicitly that the CSV is normally newest first
              newest-first

   include
              include RULESFILE

       This  includes  the  contents  of another CSV rules file at this point.
       RULESFILE is an absolute file path or a path relative  to  the  current
       file's  directory.  This can be useful for sharing common rules between
       several rules files, eg:

              # someaccount.csv.rules

              ## someaccount-specific rules
              fields   date,description,amount
              account1 assets:someaccount
              account2 expenses:misc

              ## common rules
              include categorisation.rules

   balance-type
       Balance assertions generated by assigning to balanceN are of the simple
       =  type  by  default, which is a single-commodity, subaccount-excluding
       assertion.  You may find the subaccount-including variants more useful,
       eg  if  you  have  created some virtual subaccounts of checking to help
       with budgeting.  You can select a different type of assertion with  the
       balance-type rule:

              # balance assertions will consider all commodities and all subaccounts
              balance-type ==*

       Here are the balance assertion types for quick reference:

              =    single commodity, exclude subaccounts
              =*   single commodity, include subaccounts
              ==   multi commodity,  exclude subaccounts
              ==*  multi commodity,  include subaccounts

   Tips
   Rapid feedback
       It's  a  good idea to get rapid feedback while creating/troubleshooting
       CSV rules.  Here's a good way, using entr from http://eradman.com/entr-
       project :

              $ ls foo.csv* | entr bash -c 'echo ----; hledger -f foo.csv print desc:SOMEDESC'

       A  desc:  query (eg) is used to select just one, or a few, transactions
       of interest.  "bash -c" is used to run multiple  commands,  so  we  can
       echo  a  separator  each  time the command re-runs, making it easier to
       read the output.

   Valid CSV
       hledger accepts CSV conforming to RFC 4180.  When CSV  values  are  en-
       closed in quotes, note:

       o they must be double quotes (not single quotes)

       o spaces outside the quotes are not allowed

   File Extension
       To  help hledger identify the format and show the right error messages,
       CSV/SSV/TSV files should normally be named with a .csv,  .ssv  or  .tsv
       filename  extension.   Or,  the file path should be prefixed with csv:,
       ssv: or tsv:.  Eg:

              $ hledger -f foo.ssv print

       or:

              $ cat foo | hledger -f ssv:- foo

       You can override the file extension with a separator  rule  if  needed.
       See also: Input files in the hledger manual.

   Reading multiple CSV files
       If  you  use  multiple  -f  options to read multiple CSV files at once,
       hledger will look for a correspondingly-named rules file for  each  CSV
       file.   But if you use the --rules-file option, that rules file will be
       used for all the CSV files.

   Valid transactions
       After reading a CSV file, hledger post-processes and validates the gen-
       erated journal entries as it would for a journal file - balancing them,
       applying balance assignments, and canonicalising  amount  styles.   Any
       errors  at this stage will be reported in the usual way, displaying the
       problem entry.

       There is one exception: balance assertions, if you have generated them,
       will  not  be checked, since normally these will work only when the CSV
       data is part of the main journal.  If you do need to check balance  as-
       sertions generated from CSV right away, pipe into another hledger:

              $ hledger -f file.csv print | hledger -f- print

   Deduplicating, importing
       When  you  download a CSV file periodically, eg to get your latest bank
       transactions, the new file may overlap with  the  old  one,  containing
       some of the same records.

       The import command will (a) detect the new transactions, and (b) append
       just those transactions to your main journal.  It is idempotent, so you
       don't  have to remember how many times you ran it or with which version
       of the CSV.  (It keeps state in a hidden .latest.FILE.csv  file.)  This
       is the easiest way to import CSV data.  Eg:

              # download the latest CSV files, then run this command.
              # Note, no -f flags needed here.
              $ hledger import *.csv [--dry]

       This  method  works  for  most CSV files.  (Where records have a stable
       chronological order, and new records appear only at the new end.)

       A number of other tools and workflows, hledger-specific and  otherwise,
       exist for converting, deduplicating, classifying and managing CSV data.
       See:

       o https://hledger.org -> sidebar -> real world setups

       o https://plaintextaccounting.org -> data import/conversion

   Setting amounts
       Some tips on using the amount-setting rules discussed above.

       Here are the ways to set a posting's amount:

       1. If the CSV has a single amount field:
       Assign (via a fields list or a field assignment) to amountN.  This sets
       the Nth posting's amount.  N is usually 1 or 2 but can go up to 99.

       2. If the CSV has separate Debit and Credit amount fields:
       Assign  to amountN-in and amountN-out.  This sets posting N's amount to
       whichever of these has a non-zero value, guessing an appropriate sign.

           o If hledger guesses the wrong sign:
           Prepend a minus sign to flip it.  Eg:

                    fields date, description, amount-in, amount-out
                    amount-out -%amount-out

           o If both fields contain a non-zero value:
           The amountN-in/amountN-out rules require that each CSV record has a
           non-zero  value  in  exactly one of the two fields, so that hledger
           knows which to choose.  So these would all be rejected:

                    "",  ""
                    "0", "0"
                    "1", "none"

             If your CSV has amount values like this,  use  conditional  rules
             instead.   For  example, to make hledger to choose the value con-
             taining non-zero digits:

                    fields date, description, in, out
                    if %in [1-9]
                     amount1 %in
                    if %out [1-9]
                     amount1 %out

       3. Using the old numberless syntax:
       Assign to amount (or to amount-in and amount-out).  This  sets  posting
       1's  and posting 2's amounts (and converts posting 2's amount to cost).
       This is supported for backwards compatibility  (and  occasional  conve-
       nience).

       4. If the CSV has the balance instead of the transaction amount:
       Assign to balanceN, which sets posting N's amount indirectly via a bal-
       ance assignment.  (Old syntax: balance, equivalent to balance1.)

           o If hledger guesses the wrong default account name:
           When setting the amount via balance assertion,  hledger  may  guess
           the  wrong  default account name.  So, set the account name explic-
           itly, eg:

                    fields date, description, balance1
                    account1 assets:checking

   Amount signs
       There is some special handling for amount signs,  to  simplify  parsing
       and sign-flipping:

       o If an amount value begins with a plus sign:
       that will be removed: +AMT becomes AMT

       o If an amount value is parenthesised:
       it will be de-parenthesised and sign-flipped: (AMT) becomes -AMT

       o If  an  amount value has two minus signs (or two sets of parentheses,
         or a minus sign and parentheses):
       they cancel out and will be removed: --AMT or -(AMT) becomes AMT

       o If an amount value contains just a sign (or just a set  of  parenthe-
         ses):
       that  is removed, making it an empty value.  "+" or "-" or "()" becomes
       "".

   Setting currency/commodity
       If the currency/commodity  symbol  is  included  in  the  CSV's  amount
       field(s):

              2020-01-01,foo,$123.00

       you don't have to do anything special for the commodity symbol, it will
       be assigned as part of the amount.  Eg:

              fields date,description,amount

              2020-01-01 foo
                  expenses:unknown         $123.00
                  income:unknown          $-123.00

       If the currency is provided as a separate CSV field:

              2020-01-01,foo,USD,123.00

       You can assign that to the currency pseudo-field, which has the special
       effect  of prepending itself to every amount in the transaction (on the
       left, with no separating space):

              fields date,description,currency,amount

              2020-01-01 foo
                  expenses:unknown       USD123.00
                  income:unknown        USD-123.00

       Or, you can use a field assignment to construct  the  amount  yourself,
       with more control.  Eg to put the symbol on the right, and separated by
       a space:

              fields date,description,cur,amt
              amount %amt %cur

              2020-01-01 foo
                  expenses:unknown        123.00 USD
                  income:unknown         -123.00 USD

       Note we used a temporary field name (cur) that is not currency  -  that
       would trigger the prepending effect, which we don't want here.

   Referencing other fields
       In  field assignments, you can interpolate only CSV fields, not hledger
       fields.  In the example below, there's both a CSV field and  a  hledger
       field  named  amount1, but %amount1 always means the CSV field, not the
       hledger field:

              # Name the third CSV field "amount1"
              fields date,description,amount1

              # Set hledger's amount1 to the CSV amount1 field followed by USD
              amount1 %amount1 USD

              # Set comment to the CSV amount1 (not the amount1 assigned above)
              comment %amount1

       Here, since there's no CSV amount1 field, %amount1 will produce a  lit-
       eral "amount1":

              fields date,description,csvamount
              amount1 %csvamount USD
              # Can't interpolate amount1 here
              comment %amount1

       When  there  are  multiple field assignments to the same hledger field,
       only the last one takes effect.  Here, comment's value will be be B, or
       C if "something" is matched, but never A:

              comment A
              comment B
              if something
               comment C

   How CSV rules are evaluated
       Here's  how  to  think of CSV rules being evaluated (if you really need
       to).  First,

       o include - all includes are inlined, from top to bottom, depth  first.
         (At  each  include  point the file is inlined and scanned for further
         includes, recursively, before proceeding.)

       Then "global" rules are evaluated, top to bottom.  If  a  rule  is  re-
       peated, the last one wins:

       o skip (at top level)

       o date-format

       o newest-first

       o fields - names the CSV fields, optionally sets up initial assignments
         to hledger fields

       Then for each CSV record in turn:

       o test all if blocks.  If any of them contain a end rule, skip all  re-
         maining  CSV  records.  Otherwise if any of them contain a skip rule,
         skip that many CSV records.   If  there  are  multiple  matched  skip
         rules, the first one wins.

       o collect  all field assignments at top level and in matched if blocks.
         When there are multiple assignments for a field, keep only  the  last
         one.

       o compute  a value for each hledger field - either the one that was as-
         signed to it (and interpolate the %CSVFIELDNAME references), or a de-
         fault

       o generate a synthetic hledger transaction from these values.

       This  is all part of the CSV reader, one of several readers hledger can
       use to parse input files.  When all files have been read  successfully,
       the  transactions  are passed as input to whichever hledger command the
       user specified.

TIMECLOCK FORMAT
       The time logging format of timeclock.el, as read by hledger.

       hledger can read time logs in timeclock format.  As with Ledger,  these
       are (a subset of) timeclock.el's format, containing clock-in and clock-
       out entries as in the example below.  The date is a simple  date.   The
       time  format is HH:MM[:SS][+-ZZZZ].  Seconds and timezone are optional.
       The timezone, if present, must be four digits and is ignored (currently
       the time is always interpreted as a local time).

              i 2015/03/30 09:00:00 some:account name  optional description after two spaces
              o 2015/03/30 09:20:00
              i 2015/03/31 22:21:45 another account
              o 2015/04/01 02:00:34

       hledger  treats  each  clock-in/clock-out pair as a transaction posting
       some number of hours to an account.  Or if the session spans more  than
       one  day, it is split into several transactions, one for each day.  For
       the above time log, hledger print generates these journal entries:

              $ hledger -f t.timeclock print
              2015-03-30 * optional description after two spaces
                  (some:account name)         0.33h

              2015-03-31 * 22:21-23:59
                  (another account)         1.64h

              2015-04-01 * 00:00-02:00
                  (another account)         2.01h

       Here is a sample.timeclock to download and some queries to try:

              $ hledger -f sample.timeclock balance                               # current time balances
              $ hledger -f sample.timeclock register -p 2009/3                    # sessions in march 2009
              $ hledger -f sample.timeclock register -p weekly --depth 1 --empty  # time summary by week

       To generate time logs, ie to clock in and clock out, you could:

       o use emacs and the built-in timeclock.el, or the  extended  timeclock-
         x.el and perhaps the extras in ledgerutils.el

       o at the command line, use these bash aliases: shell     alias ti="echo
         i `date '+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'` \$* >>$TIMELOG"      alias  to="echo  o
         `date '+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'` >>$TIMELOG"

       o or use the old ti and to scripts in the ledger 2.x repository.  These
         rely on a "timeclock" executable which I think is just the  ledger  2
         executable renamed.

TIMEDOT FORMAT
       hledger's human-friendly time logging format.

       Timedot  is  a plain text format for logging dated, categorised quanti-
       ties (of time, usually), supported by hledger.  It  is  convenient  for
       approximate  and retroactive time logging, eg when the real-time clock-
       in/out required with a timeclock file is too precise or  too  interrup-
       tive.   It  can be formatted like a bar chart, making clear at a glance
       where time was spent.

       Though called "timedot", this format is read by hledger  as  commodity-
       less  quantities,  so  it  could  be used to represent dated quantities
       other than time.  In the docs below we'll assume it's time.

       A timedot file contains a series of day entries.  A  day  entry  begins
       with  a  non-indented hledger-style simple date (Y-M-D, Y/M/D, Y.M.D..)
       Any additional text on the same line is used as a transaction  descrip-
       tion for this day.

       This is followed by optionally-indented timelog items for that day, one
       per line.  Each timelog item is a  note,  usually  a  hledger:style:ac-
       count:name  representing  a time category, followed by two or more spa-
       ces, and a quantity.  Each timelog item generates  a  hledger  transac-
       tion.

       Quantities can be written as:

       o dots:  a sequence of dots (.) representing quarter hours.  Spaces may
         optionally be used for grouping.  Eg: ....  ..

       o an integral or decimal number, representing hours.  Eg: 1.5

       o an integral or decimal number immediately followed by a  unit  symbol
         s,  m,  h, d, w, mo, or y, representing seconds, minutes, hours, days
         weeks, months or years respectively.  Eg: 90m.  The following equiva-
         lencies  are  assumed,  currently: 1m = 60s, 1h = 60m, 1d = 24h, 1w =
         7d, 1mo = 30d, 1y=365d.

       There is some flexibility allowing notes and  todo  lists  to  be  kept
       right in the time log, if needed:

       o Blank lines and lines beginning with # or ; are ignored.

       o Lines not ending with a double-space and quantity are parsed as items
         taking no time, which will not appear in balance reports by  default.
         (Add -E to see them.)

       o Org  mode headlines (lines beginning with one or more * followed by a
         space) can be used as date lines or timelog items (the stars are  ig-
         nored).   Also  all  org headlines before the first date line are ig-
         nored.  This means org users can manage their timelog as an org  out-
         line  (eg  using org-mode/orgstruct-mode in Emacs), for organisation,
         faster navigation, controlling visibility etc.

       Examples:

              # on this day, 6h was spent on client work, 1.5h on haskell FOSS work, etc.
              2016/2/1
              inc:client1   .... .... .... .... .... ....
              fos:haskell   .... ..
              biz:research  .

              2016/2/2
              inc:client1   .... ....
              biz:research  .

              2016/2/3
              inc:client1   4
              fos:hledger   3
              biz:research  1

              * Time log
              ** 2020-01-01
              *** adm:time  .
              *** adm:finance  .

              * 2020 Work Diary
              ** Q1
              *** 2020-02-29
              **** DONE
              0700 yoga
              **** UNPLANNED
              **** BEGUN
              hom:chores
               cleaning  ...
               water plants
                outdoor - one full watering can
                indoor - light watering
              **** TODO
              adm:planning: trip
              *** LATER

       Reporting:

              $ hledger -f t.timedot print date:2016/2/2
              2016-02-02 *
                  (inc:client1)          2.00

              2016-02-02 *
                  (biz:research)          0.25

              $ hledger -f t.timedot bal --daily --tree
              Balance changes in 2016-02-01-2016-02-03:

                          ||  2016-02-01d  2016-02-02d  2016-02-03d
              ============++========================================
               biz        ||         0.25         0.25         1.00
                 research ||         0.25         0.25         1.00
               fos        ||         1.50            0         3.00
                 haskell  ||         1.50            0            0
                 hledger  ||            0            0         3.00
               inc        ||         6.00         2.00         4.00
                 client1  ||         6.00         2.00         4.00
              ------------++----------------------------------------
                          ||         7.75         2.25         8.00

       I prefer to use period for separating account components.  We can  make
       this work with an account alias:

              2016/2/4
              fos.hledger.timedot  4
              fos.ledger           ..

              $ hledger -f t.timedot --alias /\\./=: bal date:2016/2/4 --tree
                              4.50  fos
                              4.00    hledger:timedot
                              0.50    ledger
              --------------------
                              4.50

       Here is a sample.timedot.

COMMON TASKS
       Here  are  some  quick  examples  of  how  to  do some basic tasks with
       hledger.  For more  details,  see  the  reference  section  below,  the
       hledger_journal(5)    manual,   or   the   more   extensive   docs   at
       https://hledger.org.

   Getting help
              $ hledger                 # show available commands
              $ hledger --help          # show common options
              $ hledger CMD --help      # show common and command options, and command help
              $ hledger help            # show available manuals/topics
              $ hledger help hledger    # show hledger manual as info/man/text (auto-chosen)
              $ hledger help journal --man  # show the journal manual as a man page
              $ hledger help --help     # show more detailed help for the help command

       Find   more   docs,   chat,   mail   list,   reddit,   issue   tracker:
       https://hledger.org#help-feedback

   Constructing command lines
       hledger  has  an  extensive  and  powerful  command line interface.  We
       strive to keep it simple and ergonomic, but you may run into one of the
       confusing real world details described in OPTIONS, below.  If that hap-
       pens, here are some tips that may help:

       o command-specific options must go after the command (it's fine to  put
         all options there) (hledger CMD OPTS ARGS)

       o running  add-on  executables directly simplifies command line parsing
         (hledger-ui OPTS ARGS)

       o enclose "problematic" args in single quotes

       o if needed, also add a backslash to hide regular expression  metachar-
         acters from the shell

       o to see how a misbehaving command is being parsed, add --debug=2.

   Starting a journal file
       hledger   looks   for   your   accounting   data  in  a  journal  file,
       $HOME/.hledger.journal by default:

              $ hledger stats
              The hledger journal file "/Users/simon/.hledger.journal" was not found.
              Please create it first, eg with "hledger add" or a text editor.
              Or, specify an existing journal file with -f or LEDGER_FILE.

       You can override this by setting the LEDGER_FILE environment  variable.
       It's a good practice to keep this important file under version control,
       and to start a new file each year.  So  you  could  do  something  like
       this:

              $ mkdir ~/finance
              $ cd ~/finance
              $ git init
              Initialized empty Git repository in /Users/simon/finance/.git/
              $ touch 2020.journal
              $ echo "export LEDGER_FILE=$HOME/finance/2020.journal" >> ~/.bashrc
              $ source ~/.bashrc
              $ hledger stats
              Main file                : /Users/simon/finance/2020.journal
              Included files           :
              Transactions span        :  to  (0 days)
              Last transaction         : none
              Transactions             : 0 (0.0 per day)
              Transactions last 30 days: 0 (0.0 per day)
              Transactions last 7 days : 0 (0.0 per day)
              Payees/descriptions      : 0
              Accounts                 : 0 (depth 0)
              Commodities              : 0 ()
              Market prices            : 0 ()

   Setting opening balances
       Pick  a  starting  date  for which you can look up the balances of some
       real-world assets (bank accounts,  wallet..)  and  liabilities  (credit
       cards..).

       To  avoid  a  lot of data entry, you may want to start with just one or
       two accounts, like your checking account or cash wallet; and pick a re-
       cent  starting  date, like today or the start of the week.  You can al-
       ways come back later and add more accounts and older  transactions,  eg
       going back to january 1st.

       Add  an opening balances transaction to the journal, declaring the bal-
       ances on this date.  Here are two ways to do it:

       o The first way: open the journal in any text editor and save an  entry
         like this:

                2020-01-01 * opening balances
                    assets:bank:checking                $1000   = $1000
                    assets:bank:savings                 $2000   = $2000
                    assets:cash                          $100   = $100
                    liabilities:creditcard               $-50   = $-50
                    equity:opening/closing balances

         These  are  start-of-day  balances, ie whatever was in the account at
         the end of the previous day.

         The * after the date is an  optional  status  flag.   Here  it  means
         "cleared & confirmed".

         The  currency symbols are optional, but usually a good idea as you'll
         be dealing with multiple currencies sooner or later.

         The = amounts are optional balance assertions, providing extra  error
         checking.

       o The  second  way:  run hledger add and follow the prompts to record a
         similar transaction:

                $ hledger add
                Adding transactions to journal file /Users/simon/finance/2020.journal
                Any command line arguments will be used as defaults.
                Use tab key to complete, readline keys to edit, enter to accept defaults.
                An optional (CODE) may follow transaction dates.
                An optional ; COMMENT may follow descriptions or amounts.
                If you make a mistake, enter < at any prompt to go one step backward.
                To end a transaction, enter . when prompted.
                To quit, enter . at a date prompt or press control-d or control-c.
                Date [2020-02-07]: 2020-01-01
                Description: * opening balances
                Account 1: assets:bank:checking
                Amount  1: $1000
                Account 2: assets:bank:savings
                Amount  2 [$-1000]: $2000
                Account 3: assets:cash
                Amount  3 [$-3000]: $100
                Account 4: liabilities:creditcard
                Amount  4 [$-3100]: $-50
                Account 5: equity:opening/closing balances
                Amount  5 [$-3050]:
                Account 6 (or . or enter to finish this transaction): .
                2020-01-01 * opening balances
                    assets:bank:checking                      $1000
                    assets:bank:savings                       $2000
                    assets:cash                                $100
                    liabilities:creditcard                     $-50
                    equity:opening/closing balances          $-3050

                Save this transaction to the journal ? [y]:
                Saved.
                Starting the next transaction (. or ctrl-D/ctrl-C to quit)
                Date [2020-01-01]: .

       If you're using version control, this could be a good  time  to  commit
       the journal.  Eg:

              $ git commit -m 'initial balances' 2020.journal

   Recording transactions
       As  you spend or receive money, you can record these transactions using
       one of the methods above (text editor, hledger add)  or  by  using  the
       hledger-iadd  or hledger-web add-ons, or by using the import command to
       convert CSV data downloaded from your bank.

       Here are some simple transactions, see  the  hledger_journal(5)  manual
       and hledger.org for more ideas:

              2020/1/10 * gift received
                assets:cash   $20
                income:gifts

              2020.1.12 * farmers market
                expenses:food    $13
                assets:cash

              2020-01-15 paycheck
                income:salary
                assets:bank:checking    $1000

   Reconciling
       Periodically  you should reconcile - compare your hledger-reported bal-
       ances against external sources of truth, like bank statements  or  your
       bank's  website - to be sure that your ledger accurately represents the
       real-world balances (and, that the  real-world  institutions  have  not
       made  a  mistake!).   This gets easy and fast with (1) practice and (2)
       frequency.  If you do it daily, it can take 2-10 minutes.  If  you  let
       it  pile  up, expect it to take longer as you hunt down errors and dis-
       crepancies.

       A typical workflow:

       1. Reconcile cash.  Count what's in your  wallet.   Compare  with  what
          hledger  reports  (hledger bal cash).  If they are different, try to
          remember the missing transaction, or look for the error in  the  al-
          ready-recorded  transactions.   A  register  report  can  be helpful
          (hledger reg cash).  If you can't find the error, add an  adjustment
          transaction.  Eg if you have $105 after the above, and can't explain
          the missing $2, it could be:

                  2020-01-16 * adjust cash
                      assets:cash    $-2 = $105
                      expenses:misc

       2. Reconcile checking.  Log in to your bank's website.  Compare today's
          (cleared) balance with hledger's cleared balance (hledger bal check-
          ing -C).  If they are different, track down the error or record  the
          missing  transaction(s) or add an adjustment transaction, similar to
          the above.  Unlike the cash case, you can usually compare the trans-
          action  history  and running balance from your bank with the one re-
          ported by hledger reg checking -C.  This will be easier if you  gen-
          erally  record transaction dates quite similar to your bank's clear-
          ing dates.

       3. Repeat for other asset/liability accounts.

       Tip: instead of the register command, use hledger-ui to see a  live-up-
       dating register while you edit the journal: hledger-ui --watch --regis-
       ter checking -C

       After reconciling, it could be a  good  time  to  mark  the  reconciled
       transactions'  status  as "cleared and confirmed", if you want to track
       that, by adding the * marker.  Eg in the  paycheck  transaction  above,
       insert * between 2020-01-15 and paycheck

       If  you're using version control, this can be another good time to com-
       mit:

              $ git commit -m 'txns' 2020.journal

   Reporting
       Here are some basic reports.

       Show all transactions:

              $ hledger print
              2020-01-01 * opening balances
                  assets:bank:checking                      $1000
                  assets:bank:savings                       $2000
                  assets:cash                                $100
                  liabilities:creditcard                     $-50
                  equity:opening/closing balances          $-3050

              2020-01-10 * gift received
                  assets:cash              $20
                  income:gifts

              2020-01-12 * farmers market
                  expenses:food             $13
                  assets:cash

              2020-01-15 * paycheck
                  income:salary
                  assets:bank:checking           $1000

              2020-01-16 * adjust cash
                  assets:cash               $-2 = $105
                  expenses:misc

       Show account names, and their hierarchy:

              $ hledger accounts --tree
              assets
                bank
                  checking
                  savings
                cash
              equity
                opening/closing balances
              expenses
                food
                misc
              income
                gifts
                salary
              liabilities
                creditcard

       Show all account totals:

              $ hledger balance
                             $4105  assets
                             $4000    bank
                             $2000      checking
                             $2000      savings
                              $105    cash
                            $-3050  equity:opening/closing balances
                               $15  expenses
                               $13    food
                                $2    misc
                            $-1020  income
                              $-20    gifts
                            $-1000    salary
                              $-50  liabilities:creditcard
              --------------------
                                 0

       Show only asset and liability balances, as  a  flat  list,  limited  to
       depth 2:

              $ hledger bal assets liabilities --flat -2
                             $4000  assets:bank
                              $105  assets:cash
                              $-50  liabilities:creditcard
              --------------------
                             $4055

       Show  the  same  thing  without negative numbers, formatted as a simple
       balance sheet:

              $ hledger bs --flat -2
              Balance Sheet 2020-01-16

                                      || 2020-01-16
              ========================++============
               Assets                 ||
              ------------------------++------------
               assets:bank            ||      $4000
               assets:cash            ||       $105
              ------------------------++------------
                                      ||      $4105
              ========================++============
               Liabilities            ||
              ------------------------++------------
               liabilities:creditcard ||        $50
              ------------------------++------------
                                      ||        $50
              ========================++============
               Net:                   ||      $4055

       The final total is your "net worth" on the end date.  (Or use bse for a
       full balance sheet with equity.)

       Show income and expense totals, formatted as an income statement:

              hledger is
              Income Statement 2020-01-01-2020-01-16

                             || 2020-01-01-2020-01-16
              ===============++=======================
               Revenues      ||
              ---------------++-----------------------
               income:gifts  ||                   $20
               income:salary ||                 $1000
              ---------------++-----------------------
                             ||                 $1020
              ===============++=======================
               Expenses      ||
              ---------------++-----------------------
               expenses:food ||                   $13
               expenses:misc ||                    $2
              ---------------++-----------------------
                             ||                   $15
              ===============++=======================
               Net:          ||                 $1005

       The final total is your net income during this period.

       Show transactions affecting your wallet, with running total:

              $ hledger register cash
              2020-01-01 opening balances     assets:cash                   $100          $100
              2020-01-10 gift received        assets:cash                    $20          $120
              2020-01-12 farmers market       assets:cash                   $-13          $107
              2020-01-16 adjust cash          assets:cash                    $-2          $105

       Show weekly posting counts as a bar chart:

              $ hledger activity -W
              2019-12-30 *****
              2020-01-06 ****
              2020-01-13 ****

   Migrating to a new file
       At  the end of the year, you may want to continue your journal in a new
       file, so that old transactions don't slow down or clutter your reports,
       and  to  help ensure the integrity of your accounting history.  See the
       close command.

       If using version control, don't forget to git add the new file.

LIMITATIONS
       The need to precede add-on command options with --  when  invoked  from
       hledger is awkward.

       When input data contains non-ascii characters, a suitable system locale
       must be configured (or there will be an unhelpful error).  Eg on POSIX,
       set LANG to something other than C.

       In a Microsoft Windows CMD window, non-ascii characters and colours are
       not supported.

       On Windows, non-ascii characters may not display correctly when running
       a hledger built in CMD in MSYS/CYGWIN, or vice-versa.

       In a Cygwin/MSYS/Mintty window, the tab key is not supported in hledger
       add.

       Not all of Ledger's journal file syntax is supported.  See file  format
       differences.

       On  large  data  files,  hledger  is  slower  and uses more memory than
       Ledger.

TROUBLESHOOTING
       Here are some issues you might encounter when you run hledger (and  re-
       member  you  can  also seek help from the IRC channel, mail list or bug
       tracker):

       Successfully installed, but "No command 'hledger' found"
       stack and cabal install binaries into a special directory, which should
       be  added  to your PATH environment variable.  Eg on unix-like systems,
       that is ~/.local/bin and ~/.cabal/bin respectively.

       I set a custom LEDGER_FILE, but hledger is still using the default file
       LEDGER_FILE should be a real environment variable,  not  just  a  shell
       variable.   The command env | grep LEDGER_FILE should show it.  You may
       need to use export.  Here's an explanation.

       Getting errors like "Illegal byte sequence" or "Invalid  or  incomplete
       multibyte  or wide character" or "commitAndReleaseBuffer: invalid argu-
       ment (invalid character)"
       Programs compiled with GHC (hledger, haskell build tools, etc.) need to
       have a UTF-8-aware locale configured in the environment, otherwise they
       will fail with these kinds of  errors  when  they  encounter  non-ascii
       characters.

       To  fix it, set the LANG environment variable to some locale which sup-
       ports UTF-8.  The locale you choose must be installed on your system.

       Here's an example of setting LANG temporarily, on Ubuntu GNU/Linux:

              $ file my.journal
              my.journal: UTF-8 Unicode text         # the file is UTF8-encoded
              $ echo $LANG
              C                                      # LANG is set to the default locale, which does not support UTF8
              $ locale -a                            # which locales are installed ?
              C
              en_US.utf8                             # here's a UTF8-aware one we can use
              POSIX
              $ LANG=en_US.utf8 hledger -f my.journal print   # ensure it is used for this command

       If available, C.UTF-8 will also work.  If your preferred  locale  isn't
       listed  by  locale  -a, you might need to install it.  Eg on Ubuntu/De-
       bian:

              $ apt-get install language-pack-fr
              $ locale -a
              C
              en_US.utf8
              fr_BE.utf8
              fr_CA.utf8
              fr_CH.utf8
              fr_FR.utf8
              fr_LU.utf8
              POSIX
              $ LANG=fr_FR.utf8 hledger -f my.journal print

       Here's how you could set it permanently, if you use a bash shell:

              $ echo "export LANG=en_US.utf8" >>~/.bash_profile
              $ bash --login

       Exact spelling and capitalisation may be important.  Note  the  differ-
       ence  on  MacOS  (UTF-8,  not  utf8).  Some platforms (eg ubuntu) allow
       variant spellings, but others (eg macos) require it to be exact:

              $ locale -a | grep -iE en_us.*utf
              en_US.UTF-8
              $ LANG=en_US.UTF-8 hledger -f my.journal print



REPORTING BUGS
       Report bugs at http://bugs.hledger.org (or on the #hledger IRC  channel
       or hledger mail list)


AUTHORS
       Simon Michael <simon@joyful.com> and contributors


COPYRIGHT
       Copyright (C) 2007-2020 Simon Michael.
       Released under GNU GPL v3 or later.


SEE ALSO
       hledger(1), hledger-ui(1), hledger-web(1), ledger(1)



hledger-1.20.99                  December 2020                      HLEDGER(1)
