Directive

A directive is a non-transaction command in a Ledger file that controls how the file is interpreted. Directives include:

• account — declares an account name (optional in Ledger, unlike Beancount where it’s required)
• commodity — declares a commodity and its display format
• include — includes another Ledger file, enabling modular file organization
• alias — creates a shorthand for an account name
• tag — declares metadata tags
• year / Y — sets a default year for date parsing

Directives don’t represent financial data — they configure the parser and provide metadata. Ledger is permissive about directives; most are optional and exist to add structure or catch typos through strict mode (--strict or --pedantic flags).