hledger/site/faq.md

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Frequently asked questions

hledger & Ledger

History

I was a happy user of John Wiegley’s Ledger (begun in 2003) for some time. There was a long period of stagnation in that project. I grew tired of bugs, missing and wrong documentation, and explaining the situation to confused newcomers. I really, truly needed a reliable accounting tool. I really didn’t want to spend time learning C++.

I felt Ledger could be implemented well and perhaps even more successfully in the Haskell programming language, which has some compelling advantages. (It encourages the coding style known as pure functional programming, allowing more bug-free, concise and maintainable software. It provides a more abstracted, portable platform making installation easier. It is attractive for contributors to work on.)

I couldn’t ask John to start over - back then he was not the Haskell lover he has since become! - so in 2007 I started prototyping a parser, and kept going. My goals were to (a) learn how well Haskell could do in this (simple, thought I) real-world application, and (b) maybe, build on Ledger’s experience to create a new implementation prioritising ease of use. It would have simpler features, fewer bugs, better documentation, and additional user interfaces.

Later the Ledger project revived and attracted more contributors. The two projects collaborate freely and ideas have travelled in both directions. Having two independent somewhat-compatible implementations has been quite helpful for testing and troubleshooting, exploring the design space, and growing the “*ledger” community. I also give back to Ledger by providing infrastructure like ledger-cli.org, LedgerTips, IRC support on #ledger etc.

For some time hledger shared Ledger’s IRC channel #ledger. In 2014 I added the dedicated #hledger channel.

Future ?

There is a ledger4 repo on github; this is John’s 2012/2013 rewrite of some parts of Ledger 3, including the parser, in Haskell. We have a plan to add this parser to hledger in 2015/2016, increasing its ability to read Ledger’s files.

Features

Compared to Ledger, hledger builds quickly and has a complete and accurate manual, an easier report query syntax, multi-column balance reports, better depth limiting, an interactive data entry assistant, and optional web and curses interfaces.

Compared to hledger, Ledger has additional power-user features such as periodic and modifier transactions, budget reports, and the built in value expressions language, and it remains faster and more memory efficient (for now).

We currently support:

• Ledger’s journal format, mostly
• csv format
• timelog format
• regular journal transactions
• multiple commodities
• fixed transaction prices
• varying market prices
• virtual postings
• some basic output formatting
• the print, register & balance commands
• report filtering, using a different query syntax

We do not support:

• automated transactions
• value expressions
• budget reports

And we add these commands:

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

File formats

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

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

Functional differences

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

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

• hledger’s weekly reporting intervals always start on mondays

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

• hledger always shows timelog balances in hours

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• hledger’s include directive works only in journal files, and currently can only include journal files, not eg timelog or CSV files

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

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

UI surprises

Why does it complain about missing amounts even though I wrote one ?

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

1/1
  a 1
  b

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

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

1/1
  a  1
  b

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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