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Ledger NEWS

3.3 (unreleased)

  • Use $PAGER when environment variable is set (bug #1674)

  • Make --depth correctly fold postings to accounts of greater depth into the parent at the specified level (bug #987)

  • When using wild-cards in the include directive, include matched files in sorted order (bug #1659)

  • Try to use $XDG_HOME_CONFIG/ledger/ledgerrc or ~/.config/ledger/ledgerrc first

  • Add support for automatically reading files encrypted with GPG (bug #1949)

  • Add support for a "debit" column in the convert command (bug #1120)

  • Fix incorrect parsing of expressions containing a - without spaces (bug #2001)

  • Fix payee metadata on postings not being validated and payee aliases not being honored (bug #566 & bug #1892)

  • Fix ledger interpreting a posting with 0 difference as a null-posting, which leads to it auto-balancing the posting (bug #1942)

  • Correctly escape all string values in lisp report (bug #2034)

  • Fix a regression where empty commodities were shown (bug #1969)

  • Fix a regression where using multiple commodities in one transaction triggers an assertion (bug #1998)

  • Support building on older versions of CMAKE (less than 3.7)

  • Fix compilation with Boost 1.76 (bug #2030)

  • Fix Msys2 MinGW build (bug #1905)

  • Fix unicode problems on Windows (bug #1986)

  • Various documentation improvements

3.2.1 (2020-05-18)

  • Fix regression with expression evaluation by reverting commit Correction to the way parens are parsed in query expressions (bug #1894)

  • Fix --invert breakage by reverting commit Change --invert to invert displayed amounts and totals, not amounts (bug #1895)

  • Fix performance regression by reverting commit Compare price annotations using their textual rendering (bug #1907)

  • Fix library path issue (bug #1885)

  • Allow specifying the Python version (bug #1893)

  • Some documentation fixes

3.2.0 (2020-05-01)

  • Port Python support to Python 3

  • Entities are no longer regarded as defined due to being part of a cleared transaction. --explicit is effectively enabled by default and is now a no-op (PR #1819)

  • Add --average-lot-prices to show the average of lot prices

  • Add support for %F date format specifier (bug #1775)

  • Add commodity_price(NAME, DATE) function

  • Add set_commodity_price(NAME, DATE) function

  • Fix buffer overflow when evaluating date

  • Fix balance assertions on accounts with virtual posts (bug #543)

  • Fix segfault with ledger print (bug #1850)

  • Ensure that apply directives (like apply account) have the required argument (bug #553)

  • Format annotations using a date format that can be parsed

  • Change --invert to invert displayed amounts and totals, not amounts (bug #1803)

  • Correct the way parens are parsed in query expressions

  • Compare price annotations using their textual rendering

  • Fix build failure with utfcpp 3.0 (bug #1816)

  • Fix build failure due to ambiguous type (bug #1833)

3.1.3 (2019-03-31)

  • Properly reject postings with a comment right after the flag (bug #1753)

  • Make sorting order of lot information deterministic (bug #1747)

  • Fix bug in tag value parsing (bug #1702)

  • Remove the org command, which was always a hack to begin with (bug #1706)

  • Provide Docker information in README

  • Various small documentation improvements

3.1.2 (2019-02-05)

  • Increase maximum length for regex from 255 to 4095 (bug #981)

  • Initialize periods from from/since clause rather than earliest transaction date (bug #1159)

  • Check balance assertions against the amount after the posting (bug #1147)

  • Allow balance assertions with multiple posts to same account (bug #1187)

  • Fix period duration of "every X days" and similar statements (bug #370)

  • Make option --force-color not require --color anymore (bug #1109)

  • Add quoted_rfc4180 to allow CVS output with RFC 4180 compliant quoting.

  • Add support for --prepend-format in accounts command

  • Fix handling of edge cases in trim function (bug #520)

  • Fix auto xact posts not getting applied to account total during journal parse (bug #552)

  • Transfer null_post flags to generated postings

  • Fix segfault when using --market with --group-by

  • Use amount_width variable for budget report

  • Keep pending items in budgets until the last day they apply

  • Fix bug where .total used in value expressions breaks totals

  • Make automated transactions work with assertions (bug #1127)

  • Improve parsing of date tokens (bug #1626)

  • Don't attempt to invert a value if it's already zero (bug #1703)

  • Do not parse user-specified init-file twice

  • Fix parsing issue of effective dates (bug #1722, TALOS-2017-0303, CVE-2017-2807)

  • Fix use-after-free issue with deferred postings (bug #1723, TALOS-2017-0304, CVE-2017-2808)

  • Fix possible stack overflow in option parsing routine (bug #1222, CVE-2017-12481)

  • Fix possible stack overflow in date parsing routine (bug #1224, CVE-2017-12482)

  • Fix use-after-free when using --gain (bug #541)

  • Python: Removed double quotes from Unicode values.

  • Python: Ensure that parse errors produce useful RuntimeErrors

  • Python: Expose journal expand_aliases

  • Python: Expose journal_t::register_account

  • Improve bash completion

  • Emacs Lisp files have been moved to https://github.com/ledger/ledger-mode

  • Fix build under MSYS (32-bit).

  • Fix build under Cygwin.

  • Various documentation improvements

3.1.1 (2016-01-11)

  • Added a --no-revalued option

  • Improved Embedded Python Support

  • Use ./.ledgerrc if ~/.ledgerrc doesn't exist

  • Fixed parsing of transactions with single-character payees and comments

  • Fixed crash when using -M with empty result

  • Fixed sorting for option --auto-match

  • Fixed treatment of year 2015 and Y2014 directives

  • Fixed crash when using --trace 10 or above

  • Build fix for boost 1.58, 1.59, 1.60

  • Build fix for Cygwin

  • Fixed Util and Math tests on Mac OS X

  • Various documentation improvements

  • Examples in the documentation are tested just like unit tests

  • Add continuous integration (https://travis-ci.org/ledger/ledger)

3.1 (2014-10-05)

  • Changed the definition of cost basis to preserve the original cost basis when a gain or loss is made (if you bought 1 AAA for $10 and then sold it for $12, ledger would previously take $12 as the cost; the original cost of $10 is preserved as the cost basis now, which addresses strange behavior with -B after a capital gain or loss is made).

  • Incorrect automatic Equity:Capital Gains and Equity:Capital Loss entries are no longer generated when a commodity is sold for loss or profit.

  • Support for virtual posting costs.

  • The option --permissive now quiets balance assertions

  • Removed SHA1 files due to license issues and use boost instead.

  • Added option --no-pager to disable the pager.

  • Added option --no-aliases to completely disable alias expansion

  • Added option --recursive-aliases to expand aliases recursively

  • Support payee uuid directive.

  • Bug fix: when a status flag (! or *) is explicitly specified for an individual posting, it always has a priority over entire transaction status.

  • Bug fix: don't lose commodity when cost is not separated by whitespace

  • Improved backwards compatibility with ledger 2.x

  • Build fix for GCC 4.9

  • Build fix for boost 1.56

  • Many improvements to ledger-mode, including fontification

  • More test cases and unit tests

  • Contrib: Added script to generate commodities from ISO 4217

3.0

Due to the magnitude of changes in 3.0, only changes that affect compatibility with 2.x files and usage is mentioned here. For a description of new features, please see the manual.

  • The option -g (--performance) was removed.

  • The balance report now defaults to showing all relevant accounts. This is the opposite of 2.x. That is, bal in 3.0 does what -s bal did in 2.x. To see 2.6 behavior, use bal -n in 3.0. The -s option no longer has any effect on balance reports.

2.6.3

  • Minor fixes to allow for compilation with gcc 4.4.

2.6.2

  • Bug fix: Command-line options, such as -O, now override init-file options such as -V.

  • Bug fix: "cat data | ledger -f -" now works.

  • Bug fix: --no-cache is now honored. Previously, it was writing out a cache file named "".

  • Bug fix: Using %.2X in a format string now outputs 2 spaces if the state is cleared.

2.6.1

  • Added the concept of "balance setting transactions":

    Setting an account's balance

    You can now manually set an account's balance to whatever you want, at any time. Here's how it might look at the beginning of your Ledger file:

    2008/07/27 Starting fresh
    Assets:Checking      = $1,000.00
    Equity:Opening Balances

    If Assets:Checking is empty, this is no different from omitting the "=". However, if Assets:Checking did have a prior balance, the amount of the transaction will be auto-calculated so that the final balance of Assets:Checking is now $1,000.00.

    Let me give an example of this. Say you have this:

    2008/07/27 Starting fresh
    Assets:Checking          $750.00
    Equity:Opening Balances

2008/07/27 Starting fresh
    Assets:Checking      = $1,000.00
    Equity:Adjustments

    These two entries are exactly equivalent to these two:

    2008/07/27 Starting fresh
    Assets:Checking          $750.00
    Equity:Opening Balances

2008/07/27 Starting fresh
    Assets:Checking          $250.00
    Equity:Adjustments

    The use of the "=" sign here is that it sets the transaction's amount to whatever is required to satisfy the assignment. This is the behavior if the transaction's amount is left empty.

    Multiple commodities

    As far as commodities go, the = sign only works if the account balance's commodity matches the commodity of the amount after the equals sign. However, if the account has multiple commodities, only the matching commodity is affected. Here's what I mean:

    2008/07/24 Opening Balance
    Assets:Checking        = $250.00          ; we force set it
    Equity:Opening Balances

2008/07/24 Opening Balance
    Assets:Checking      = EC 250.00          ; we force set it again
    Equity:Opening Balances

    This is an error, because $250.00 cannot be auto-balanced to match EC 250.00. However:

    2008/07/24 Opening Balance
    Assets:Checking        = $250.00          ; we force set it again
    Assets:Checking        EC 100.00          ; and add some EC's
    Equity:Opening Balances

2008/07/24 Opening Balance
    Assets:Checking      = EC 250.00          ; we force set the EC's
    Equity:Opening Balances

    This is not an error, because the latter auto-balancing transaction only affects the EC 100.00 part of the account's balance; the $250.00 part is left alone.

    Checking statement balances

    When you reconcile a statement, there are typically one or more transactions which result in a known balance. Here's how you specify that in your Ledger data:

    2008/07/24 Opening Balance
    Assets:Checking        = $100.00
    Equity:Opening Balances

2008/07/30 We spend money, with a known balance afterward
    Expenses:Food             $20.00
    Assets:Checking         = $80.00

2008/07/30 Again we spend money, but this time with all the info
    Expenses:Food             $20.00
    Assets:Checking          $-20.00 = $60.00

2008/07/30 This entry yield an 'unbalanced' error
    Expenses:Food             $20.00
    Assets:Checking          $-20.00 = $30.00

    The last entry in this set fails to balance with an unbalanced remainder of $-10.00. Either the entry must be corrected, or you can have Ledger deal with the remainder automatically:

    2008/07/30 The fixed entry
    Expenses:Food              $20.00
    Assets:Checking           $-20.00 = $30.00
    Equity:Adjustments

    Conclusion

    This simple feature has all the utility of @check, plus auto-balancing to match known target balances, plus the ability to guarantee that an account which uses only one commodity does contain only that commodity.

    This feature slows down textual parsing slightly, does not affect speed when loading from the binary cache.

  • The rest of the changes in the version is all bug fixes (around 45 of them).

2.6.0.90

  • Gnucash parser is fixed.

  • Fix a memory leak bug in the amount parser.

  • (This feature is from 2.6, but was not documented anywhere):

    Commodities may now specify lot details, to assign in managing set groups of items, like buying and selling shares of stock.

    For example, let's say you buy 50 shares of AAPL at $10 a share:

    2007/01/14 Stock purchase
    Assets:Brokerage         50 AAPL @ $10
    Assets:Brokerage

    Three months later, you sell this "lot". Based on the original purchase information, Ledger remembers how much each share was purchased for, and the date on which it was purchased. This means you can sell this specific lot by price, by date, or by both. Let's sell it by price, this time for $20 a share.

    2007/04/14 Stock purchase
    Assets:Brokerage         $1000.00
    Assets:Brokerage         -50 AAPL {$10} @ $20
    Income:Capital Gains     $-500.00

    Note that the Income:Capital Gains line is now required to balance the transaction. Because you sold 50 AAPL at $20/share, and because you are selling shares that were originally valued at $10/share, Ledger needs to know how you will "balance" this difference. An equivalent Expenses:Capital Loss would be needed if the selling price were less than the buying price.

    Here's the same example, this time selling by date and price:

    2007/04/14 Stock purchase
    Assets:Brokerage         $1000.00
    Assets:Brokerage         -50 AAPL {$10} [2007/01/14] @ $20
    Income:Capital Gains     $-500.00

    If you attempt to sell shares for a date you did not buy them, note that Ledger will not complain (as it never complains about the movement of commodities between accounts). In this case, it will simply create a negative balance for such shares within your Brokerage account; it's up to you to determine whether you have them or not.

  • To facilitate lot pricing reports, there are some new reporting options:

    • --lot-prices Report commodities with different lot prices as if they were different commodities. Otherwise, Ledger just gloms all the AAPL shares together.

    • --lot-dates Separate commodities by lot date. Every transaction that uses the '@' cost specifier will have an implicit lot date and lot price.

    • --lot-tags Separate commodities by their arbitrary note tag. Note tags may be specified using (note) after the commodity.

    • --lots Separate commodities using all lot information.

2.6

  • The style for eliding long account names (for example, in the register report) has been changed. Previously Ledger would elide the end of long names, replacing the excess length with "..". However, in some cases this caused the base account name to be missing from the report!

    What Ledger now does is that if an account name is too long, it will start abbreviating the first parts of the account name down to two letters in length. If this results in a string that is still too long, the front will be elided -- not the end. For example:

    Expenses:Cash           ; OK, not too long
Ex:Wednesday:Cash       ; "Expenses" was abbreviated to fit
Ex:We:Afternoon:Cash    ; "Expenses" and "Wednesday" abbreviated
; Expenses:Wednesday:Afternoon:Lunch:Snack:Candy:Chocolate:Cash
..:Af:Lu:Sn:Ca:Ch:Cash  ; Abbreviated and elided!

    As you can see, it now takes a very deep account name before any elision will occur, whereas in 2.x elisions were fairly common.

  • In addition to the new elision change mentioned above, the style is also configurable:

    • --truncate leading ; elide at the beginning

    • --truncate middle ; elide in the middle

    • --truncate trailing ; elide at end (Ledger 2.x's behavior)

    • --truncate abbrev ; the new behavior

    • --abbrev-len 2 ; set length of abbreviations

    These elision styles affect all format strings which have a maximum width, so they will also affect the payee in a register report, for example. In the case of non-account names, "abbrev" is equivalent to "trailing", even though it elides at the beginning for long account names.

  • Error reporting has been greatly improving, now showing full contextual information for most error messages.

  • Added --base reporting option, for reporting convertible commodities in their most basic form. For example, if you read a timeclock file with Ledger, the time values are reported as hour and minutes -- whichever is the most compact form. But with --base, Ledger reports only in seconds.

    NOTE: Setting up convertible commodities is easy; here's how to use Ledger for tracking quantities of data, where the most compact form is reported (unless --base is specified):

    C 1.00 Kb = 1024 b
C 1.00 Mb = 1024 Kb
C 1.00 Gb = 1024 Mb
C 1.00 Tb = 1024 Gb

  • Added --ansi reporting option, which shows negative values in the running total column of the register report as red, using ANSI terminal codes; --ansi-invert makes non-negative values red (which makes more sense for the income and budget reports).

    The --ansi functionality is triggered by the format modifier "!", for example the register reports uses the following for the total (last) column:

    %!12.80T

    At the moment neither the balance report nor any of the other reports make use of the ! modifier, and so will not change color even if --ansi is used. However, you can modify these report format strings yourself in ~/.ledgerrc if you wish to see red coloring of negative sums in other places.

  • Added --only predicate, which occurs during transaction processing between --limit and --display. Here is a summary of how the three supported predicates are used:

    • --limit "a>100"

      This flag limits computation to only transactions whose amount is greater than 100 of a given commodity. It means that if you scan your dining expenses, for example, only individual bills greater than $100 would be calculated by the report.

    • --only "a>100"

      This flag happens much later than --limit, and corresponding more directly to what one normally expects. If --limit isn't used, then ALL your dining expenses contribute to the report, but only those calculated transactions whose value is greater than $100 are used. This becomes important when doing a monthly costs report, for example, because it makes the following command possible:

      ledger -M --only "a>100" reg ^Expenses:Food

      This shows only months whose amount is greater than 100. If --limit had been used, it would have been a monthly summary of all individual dinner bills greater than 100 -- which is a very different thing.

    • --display "a>100"

      This predicate does not constrain calculation, but only display. Consider the same command as above:

        ledger -M --display "a>100" reg ^Expenses:Food

      This displays only lines whose amount is greater than 100, yet the running total still includes amounts from all transactions. This command has more particular application, such as showing the current month's checking register while still giving a correct ending balance:

        ledger --display "d>[this month]" reg Checking

      Note that these predicates can be combined. Here is a report that considers only food bills whose individual cost is greater than $20, but shows the monthly total only if it is greater than $500. Finally, we only display the months of the last year, but we retain an accurate running total with respect to the entire ledger file:

        ledger -M --limit "a>20" --only "a>200" \
    --display "year == yearof([last year])" reg ^Expenses:Food

  • Added new "--descend AMOUNT" and "--descend-if VALEXPR" reporting options. For any reports that display valued transactions (i.e., register, print, etc), you can now descend into the component transactions that made up any of the values you see.

    For example, say you request a --monthly expenses report:

    $ ledger --monthly register ^Expenses

    Now, in one of the reported months you see $500.00 spent on Expenses:Food. You can ask Ledger to "descend" into, and show the component transactions of, that $500.00 by respecifying the query with the --descend option:

    $ ledger --monthly --descend "\$500.00" register ^Expenses

    The --descend-if option has the same effect, but takes a value expression which is evaluated as a boolean to locate the desired reported transaction.

  • Added a "dump" command for creating binary files, which load much faster than their textual originals. For example:

    ledger -f huge.dat -o huge.cache dump
ledger -f huge.cache bal

    The second command will load significantly faster (usually about six times on my machine).

  • There have a few changes to value expression syntax. The most significant incompatibilities being:

    • Equality is now ==, not =
    • The U, A, and S functions now requires parens around the argument. Whereas before At was acceptable, now it must be specified as A(t).
    • The P function now always requires two arguments. The old one-argument version P(x) is now the same as P(x,m).

    The following value expression features are new:

    • A C-like comma operator is supported, where all but the last term are ignored. The is significant for the next feature:

    • Function definitions are now supported. Scoping is governed by parentheses. For example: (x=100, x+10) ; yields 110 as the result (f(x)=x*2,f(100)) ; yields 200 as the result

    • Identifier names may be any length. Along with this support comes alternate, longer names for all of the current one-letter value expression variables:

      Old New

      m now a amount a amount b cost i price d date X cleared Y pending R real L actual n index N count l depth O total B cost_total I price_total v market V market_total g gain G gain_total U(x) abs(x) S(x) quant(x), quantity(x) comm(x), commodity(x) setcomm(x,y), set_commodity(x,y) A(x) mean(x), avg(x), average(x) P(x,y) val(x,y), value(x,y) min(x,y) max(x,y)

  • There are new "parse" and "expr" commands, whose argument is a single value expression. Ledger will simply print out the result of evaluating it. "parse" happens before parsing your ledger file, while "expr" happens afterward. Although "expr" is slower as a result, any commodities you use will be formatted based on patterns of usage seen in your ledger file.

    These commands can be used to test value expressions, or for doing calculation of commoditized amounts from a script.

    A new "--debug" will also dump the resulting parse tree, useful for submitting bug reports.

  • Added new min(x,y) and max(x,y) value expression functions.

  • Value expression function may now be defined within your ledger file (or initialization file) using the following syntax:

    @def foo(x)=x*1000

    This line makes the function "foo" available to all subsequent value expressions, to all command-line options taking a value expression, and to the new "expr" command (see above).

2.5

  • Added a new value expression regexp command: C// compare against a transaction amount's commodity symbol

  • Added a new "csv" command, for outputting results in CSV format.

  • Ledger now expands ~ in file pathnames specified in environment variables, initialization files and journal files.

  • Effective dates may now be specified for entries:

    2004/10/03=2004/09/30 Credit card company
    Liabilities:MasterCard         $100.00
    Assets:Checking

    This entry says that although the actual transactions occurred on October 3rd, their effective date was September 30th. This is especially useful for budgeting, in case you want the transactions to show up in September instead of October.

    To report using effective dates, use the --effective option.

  • Actual and effective dates may now be specified for individual transactions:

    2004/10/03=2004/09/30 Credit card company
    Liabilities:MasterCard         $100.00
    Assets:Checking                         ; [2004/10/10=2004/09/15]

    This states that although the actual date of the entry is 2004/10/03, and the effective date of the entry is 2004/09/30, the actual date of the Checking transaction itself is 2004/10/10, and its effective date is 2004/09/15. The effective date is optional (just specifying the actual date would have read "[2004/10/10]").

    If no effective date is given for a transaction, the effective date of the entry is assumed. If no actual date is given, the actual date of the entry is assumed. The syntax of the latter is simply [=2004/09/15].

  • To support the above, there is a new formatting option: "%d". This outputs only the date (like "%D") if there is no effective date, but outputs "ADATE=EDATE" if there is one. The "print" report now uses this.

  • To support the above, the register report may now split up entries whose component transactions have different dates. For example, given the following entry:

    2005/10/15=2005/09/01 iTunes
    Expenses:Music                 $1.08 ; [2005/10/20=2005/08/01]
    Liabilities:MasterCard

    The command "ledger register" on this data file reports:

    2005/10/20 iTunes   Expenses:Music            $1.08    $1.08
2005/10/15 iTunes   Liabilities:MasterCard   $-1.08        0

    While the command "ledger --effective register" reports:

    2005/08/01 iTunes   Expenses:Music            $1.08    $1.08
2005/09/01 iTunes   Liabilities:MasterCard   $-1.08        0

    Although it appears as though two entries are being reported, both transactions belong to the same entry.

  • Individual transactions may now be cleared separately. The old syntax, which is still supported, clears all transactions in an entry:

    2004/05/27 * Book Store
    Expenses:Dining                 $20.00
    Liabilities:MasterCard

    The new syntax allows clearing of just the MasterCard transaction:

    2004/05/27 Book Store
    Expenses:Dining                 $20.00
    * Liabilities:MasterCard

    NOTE: This changes the output format of both the "emacs" and "xml" reports. ledger.el uses the new syntax unless the Lisp variable `ledger-clear-whole-entries' is set to t.

  • Removed Python integration support.

  • Did much internal restructuring to allow the use of libledger.so in non-command-line environments (such as GUI tools).

2.4.1

  • Corrected an issue that had inadvertently disabled Gnucash support.

2.4

  • Both -$100.00 and $-100.00 are now equivalent amounts.

  • Simple, inline math (using the operators +-/*, and/or parentheses) is supported in transactions. For example:

    2004/05/27 Book Store
    Expenses:Dining                 $20.00 + $2.50
    Liabilities:MasterCard

    This won't register the tax/tip in its own account, but might make later reading of the ledger file easier.

  • Use of a "catch all" account is now possible, which auto-balances entries that contain only one transaction. For sanity's sake this is not used to balance all entries, as that would make locating unbalanced entries a nightmare. Example:

    A Liabilities:MasterCard

2004/05/27 Book Store
    Expenses:Dining                 $20.00 + $2.50

    This is equivalent to the entry in the previous bullet.

  • Entries that contain a single transaction with no amount now always balance, even if multiple commodities are involved. This means that the following is now supported, which wasn't previously:

    2004/06/21 Adjustment
    Retirement          100 FUNDA
    Retirement          200 FUNDB
    Retirement          300 FUNDC
    Equity:Adjustments

  • Fixed several bugs relating to QIF parsing, budgeting and forecasting.

  • The configure process now looks for libexpat in addition to searching for libxmlparse+libxmltok (how expat used to be packaged).

2.3

  • The directive "!alias ALIAS = ACCOUNT" makes it possible to use "ALIAS" as an alternative name for ACCOUNT in a textual ledger file. You might use this to associate the single word "Bank" with the checking account you use most, for example.

  • The --version page shows the optional modules ledger was built with.

  • Fixed several minor problems, plus a few major ones dealing with imprecise date parsing.

2.2

  • Ledger now compiles under gcc 2.95.

  • Fixed several core engine bugs, and problems with Ledger's XML data format.

  • Erros in XML or Gnucash data now report the correct line number for the error, instead of always showing line 1.

  • 'configure' has been changed to always use a combination of both compile and link tests for every feature, in order to identify environment problems right away.

  • The "D " command, released in 2.1, now requires a commoditized amount, such as "D $1,000.00". This sets not only the default commodity, but several flags to be used with all such commodities (such as whether numbering should be American or European by default). This entry may be used be many times; the most recent seen specifies the default for entries that follow.

  • The binary cache now remembers the price history database that was used, so that if LEDGER_PRICE_DB is silently changed, the cache will be thrown away and rebuilt.

  • OFX data importing is now supported, using libofx (http://libofx.sourceforge.net). configure will check if the library is available. You may need to add CPPFLAGS or LDFLAGS to the command-line for the appropriate headers and library to be found. This support is preliminary, and as such is not documented yet.

  • All journal entries now remember where they were read from. New format codes to access this information are: %S for source path, %B for beginning character position, and %E for ending character position.

  • Added "pricesdb" command, which is identical to "prices" except that it uses the same format as Ledger's usual price history database.

  • Added "output FILE" command, which attempts to reproduce the input journal FILE exactly. Meant for future GUI usage. This command relies on --write-hdr-format and --write-xact-format, instead of --print-format.

  • Added "--reconcile BALANCE" option, which attempts to reconcile all matching transactions to the given BALANCE, outputting those that would need to be "cleared" to match it. Using by the auto-reconciling feature of ledger.el (see below).

    "--reconcile-date DATE" ignores any uncleared transactions after DATE in the reconciling algorithm. Since the algorithm is O(n^2) (where 'n' is the number of uncleared transactions to consider), this could have a substantial impact.

  • In ledger.el's Reconcile mode ('C-c C-r' from a ledger-mode file):

    • 'a' adds a missing transaction
    • 'd' deletes the current transaction
    • 'r' attempts to auto-reconcile (same as 'C-u C-c C-r')
    • 's' or 'C-x C-s' will save the ledger data file and show the currently cleared balance
    • 'C-c C-c' commits the pending transactions, marking them cleared.

    This feature now works with Emacs 21.3. Also, the reconciler no longer needs to ask "how far back" to go.

  • To support the reconciler, textual entries may now have a "!" flag (pending) after the date, instead of a "*" flag (cleared).

  • There are a new set of value expression regexp commands:

    • c// entry code
    • p// payee
    • w// short account name
    • W// full account name
    • e// transaction note

    This makes it possible to display transactions whose comment field matches a particular text string. For example:

    ledger -l e/{tax}/ reg

    prints out all the transactions with the comment "{tax}", which might be used to identify items related to a tax report.

2.1

  • Improved the autoconf system to be smarter about finding XML libs

  • Added --no-cache option, to always ignore any binary cache file

  • `ledger-reconcile' (in ledger.el) no longer asks for a number of days

  • Fixed %.XY format, where X is shorter than the string generated by Y

  • New directive for text files: "D " specifies the default commodity used by the entry command

2.0

This version represents a full rewrite, while preserving much of the original data format and command-line syntax. There are too many new features to describe in full, but a quick list: value expressions, complex date masks, binary caching of ledger data, several new reporting options, a simple way to specify payee regexps, calculation and display predicates, and two-way Python integration. Ledger also uses autoconf now, and builds as a library in addition to a command-line driver.

Differences from 1.7

  • changes in option syntax:

    -d now specifies the display predicate. To give a date mask similar to 1.7, use the -p (period) option.

    -P now generates the "by payee" report. To specify a price database to use, use --price-db.

    -G now generates a net gain report. To print totals in a format consumable by gnuplot, use -J.

    -l now specifies the calculation predicate. To emulate the old usage of "-l $100", use: -d "AT>100".

    -N is gone. Instead of "-N REGEX", use: -d "/REGEX/?T>0:T".

    -F now specifies the report format string. The old meaning of -F now has little use.

    -S now takes a value expression as the sorting criterion. To get the old meaning of "-S", use "-S d".

    -n now means "collapse entries in the register report". The get the old meaning of -n in the balance report, use "-T a".

    -p now specifies the reporting period. You can convert commodities in a report using value expressions. For example, to display hours at $10 per hour:

    -T "O>={0.01h}?{\$10.00}*O:O"

    Or, to reduce totals, so that every $417 becomes 1.0 AU:

    -T "O>={\$0.01}?{1.0 AU}*(O/{\$417}):O"

  • The use of "+" and "-" in ledger files to specify permanent regexps has been removed.

  • The "-from" argument is no longer used by the "entry" command. Simply remove it.

Features new to 2.0

  • The most significant feature to be added is "value expressions". They are used in many places to indicate what to display, sorting order, how to calculate totals, etc. Logic and math operators are supported, as well as simple functions. See the manual.

  • If the environment variable LEDGER_FILE (or LEDGER) is used, a binary cache of that ledger is kept in ~/.ledger-cache (or the file given by LEDGER_CACHE). This greatly speeds up subsequent queries. Happens only if "-f" or "--file" is not used.

  • New 'xml' report outputs an XML version of what "register" would have displayed. This can be used to manipulate reported data in a more scriptable way.

    Ledger can also read as input the output from the "xml" report. If the "xml" report did not contain balanced entries, they will be balanced by the "" account. For example:

    ledger reg rent

    displays the same results as:

    ledger xml rent | ledger -f - reg rent

  • Regexps given directly after the command name now apply only to account names. To match on a payee, use "--" to separate the two kinds of regexps. For example, to find a payee named "John" within all Expenses accounts, use:

    ledger register expenses -- john

    Note: This command is identical (and internally converted) to:

    ledger -l "/expenses/|//john/" register

  • To include entries from another file into a specific account, use:

    !account ACCOUNT
!include FILE
!end

  • Register reports now show only matching account transactions. Use "-r" to see "related accounts" -- the account the transfer came from or went to (This was the old behavior in 1.x, but led to confusion). "-r" also works with balance reports, where it will total all the transactions related to your query.

  • Automated transactions now use value expressions for the predicate. The new syntax is:

    = VALUE-EXPR
  TRANSACTIONS...

    Only one VALUE-EXPR is supported (compared to multiple account regexps before). However, since value expression allow for logic chaining, there is no loss of functionality. Matching can also be much more comprehensive.

  • If Boost.Python is installed (libboost_python.a), ledger can support two-way Python integration. This feature is enabled by passing --enable-python to the "configure" script before building. Ledger can then be used as a module (ledger.so), as well as supporting Python function calls directly from value expressions. See main.py for an example of driving Ledger from Python. It implements nearly all the functionality of the C++ driver, main.cc.

    (This feature has yet to mature, and so is being offered as a beta feature in this release. It is mostly functional, and those curious are welcome to play with it.)

  • New reporting options:

    • "-o FILE" outputs data to FILE. If "-", output goes to stdout (the default).

    • -O shows base commodity values (this is the old behavior)

    • -B shows basis cost of commodities

    • -V shows market value of commodities

    • -g reports gain/loss performance of each register item

    • -G reports net gain/loss over time

    • -A reports average transaction value (arithmetic mean)

    • -D reports each transaction's deviation from the average

    • -w uses 132 columns for the register report, rather than 80. Set the environment variable LEDGER_WIDE for this to be the default.

    • "-p INTERVAL" allows for more flexible period reporting, such as:

      monthly every week every 3 quarters weekly from 12/20 monthly in 2003 weekly from last month until dec

    • "-y DATEFMT" changes the date format used in all reports. The default is "%Y/%m/%d".

      -Y and -W print yearly and weekly subtotals, just as -M prints monthly subtotals.

    • --dow shows cumulative totals for each day of the week.

    • -P reports transactions grouped by payee

    • -x reports the payee as the commodity; useful in some cases

    • -j and -J replace the previous -G (gnuplot) option. -j reports the amounts column in a way gnuplot can consume, and -J the totals column. An example is in "scripts/report".

    • "--period-sort EXPR" sorts transactions within a reporting period. The regular -S option sorts all reported transactions.

1.7

  • Pricing histories are now supported, so that ledger remembers the historical prices of all commodities, and can present register reports based on past and present market values as well as original cost basis. See the manual for more details on the new option switches.

1.6

  • Ledger can now parse timeclock files. These are simple timelogs that track in/out events, which can be maintained using my timeclock tool. By allowing ledger to parse these, it means that reporting can be done on them in the same way as ledger files (the commodity used is "h", for hours); it means that doing things like tracking billable hours for clients, and invoicing those clients to transfer hours into dollar values via a receivable account, is now trivial. See the docs for more on how to do this.

  • Began keeping a NEWS file. :)