hledger/hledger/Hledger/Cli/Commands/Print.md

print, txns, p
Show transaction journal entries, sorted by date.

FLAGS

The print command displays full journal entries (transactions) from the journal file in date order, tidily formatted. With –date2, transactions are sorted by secondary date instead.

print’s output is always a valid hledger journal.
It preserves all transaction information, but it does not preserve directives or inter-transaction comments

$ 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

Normally, the journal entry’s explicit or implicit amount style is preserved. Ie when an amount is omitted in the journal, it will be omitted in the output. You can use the -x/--explicit flag to make all amounts explicit, which can be useful for troubleshooting or for making your journal more readable and robust against data entry errors. Note, -x will cause postings with a multi-commodity amount (these can arise when a multi-commodity transaction has an implicit amount) will be split into multiple single-commodity postings, for valid journal output.

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 transaction: 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 special 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 ignoring 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 increasing dates, and that transactions on the same day do not get reordered. See also the import command.

This command also supports output destination and output format selection. 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","","",""

• There is one CSV record per posting, with the parent transaction’s fields repeated.
• 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.)
• The amount is separated into “commodity” (the symbol) and “amount” (numeric quantity) fields.
• The numeric amount is repeated in either the “credit” or “debit” column, for convenience. (Those names are not accurate in the accounting sense; it just puts negative amounts under credit and zero or greater amounts under debit.)