Synopsis (from a terminal command line):
pdflatex options argument
Run LaTeX on argument. In place of pdflatex
you can
also use xelatex
, or lualatex
, or dviluatex
, or
latex
.
For example, this will run LaTeX on the file thesis.tex, creating the output thesis.pdf.
pdflatex thesis
Note that .tex is the default file extension.
pdfTeX is a development of the original TeX program, as are
XeTeX and LuaTeX (see TeX engines). They are completely
backward compatible. But the original program had a custom output
format, DVI, while the newer ones can output directly to PDF. This
allows them to take advantage of the extra features in PDF such as
hyperlinks, support for modern image formats such as JPG and PNG, and
ubiquitous viewing programs. In short, if you run pdflatex
or
xelatex
or lualatex
then you will by default get PDF
and have access to all its modern features. If you run latex
,
or dvilualatex
, then you will get DVI. The description here
assumes pdfLaTeX.
See Command line options, for a selection of the most useful command line options. As to argument, the usual case is that it does not begin with a backslash, so the system takes it to be the name of a file and it compiles that file. If argument begins with a backslash then the system will interpret it as a line of LaTeX input, which can be used for special effects (see Command line input).
If you gave no arguments or options then pdflatex
prompts for
input from the terminal. You can escape from this by entering
<control>-D
.
If LaTeX finds an error in your document then by default it stops and asks you about it. See Recovering from errors for an outline of what to do.
These are the command-line options relevant to ordinary document authoring. For a full list, try running ‘latex --help’ from the command line.
With many implementations you can specify command line options by prefixing them with ‘-’ or ‘--’. This is the case for both TeX Live (and MacTeX) and MiKTeX. We will use both conventions interchangeably.
-version
Show the current version, like ‘pdfTeX 3.14159265-2.6-1.40.16 (TeX Live 2015/Debian)’ along with a small amount of additional information, and exit.
-help
Give a brief usage message that is useful as a prompt and exit.
-interaction=mode
TeX compiles a document in one of four interaction modes:
batchmode
, nonstopmode
, scrollmode
,
errorstopmode
. In errorstop mode (the default), TeX
stops at each error and asks for user intervention. In batch
mode it prints nothing on the terminal, errors are scrolled as if the
user hit <return>
at every error, and missing files cause the
job to abort. In nonstop mode, diagnostic message appear on the
terminal but as in batch mode there is no user interaction. In
scroll mode, TeX only stops for missing files or keyboard
input.
For instance, starting LaTeX with this command line
pdflatex -interaction=batchmode filename
eliminates most terminal output.
-jobname=string
Set the value of TeX’s jobname
to the string. The log file
and output file will then be named string.log and
string.pdf.
When you run
, if
argument does not start with a backslash then TeX considers it
the name of a file to input. Otherwise it waits for the first
pdflatex
options argument\input
instruction and the name of the input file will be the job
name. This is used to name the log file the output file. The
jobname
option overrides that process and directly specifies the
name. See Command line input for an example of its use.
-output-directory=directory
Write files in the directory directory. It must already exist.
--shell-escape
--no-shell-escape
--enable-write18
--disable-write18
Enable or disable \write18{shell command}
. The first two
options are for with TeX Live or MacTeX while the second two are
for MiKTeX.
Sometimes you want to run external system commands from inside a
LaTeX file. For instance the package sagetex allows you to
have the mathematics software system Sage do calculations or draw
graphs and then incorporate that output in your document. For this
TeX provides the \write18
command.
But with this functionality enabled, security issues could happen if you
compiled a LaTeX file from the Internet. By default \write18
is disabled. (More precisely, by default TeX Live, MacTeX, and
MiKTeX only allow the execution of a limited number of TeX-related
programs, which they distribute.)
If you invoke LaTeX with the option no-shell-escape
, and in
your document you call \write18{ls -l}
, then you do not get an
error but the log file says ‘runsystem(ls -l)...disabled’.
-halt-on-error
Stop processing at the first error.
-file-line-error
-no-file-line-error
Enable or disable filename:lineno:error
-style
error messages. These are only available with TeX Live or MacTeX.
As part of the command line invocation pdflatex options
argument
you can specify arbitrary LaTeX input by starting
argument with a backslash. This allows you to do some special
effects.
For example, this file (which uses the hyperref package for hyperlinks) can produce two kinds of output, one for paper and one for a PDF.
\ifdefined\paperversion % in preamble \newcommand{\urlcolor}{black} \else \newcommand{\urlcolor}{blue} \fi \usepackage[colorlinks=true,urlcolor=\urlcolor]{hyperref} ... \href{https://www.ctan.org}{CTAN} % in body ...
Compiling this document book.tex with the command line
pdflatex book
will give the ‘CTAN’ link in blue. But
compiling it with pdflatex "\def\paperversion{}\input book.tex"
has the link in black. (Note the use of double quotes to prevent
interpretation of the symbols by the command line shell; your system may
do this differently.)
In a similar way, from the single file main.tex you can compile two different versions.
pdflatex -jobname=students "\def\student{}\input{main}" pdflatex -jobname=teachers "\def\teachers{}\input{main}"
The jobname
option is there because otherwise both files would be
called main.pdf and the second would overwrite the first.
A final example. This loads the package graphicx with the option
draft
pdflatex -jobname=aa "\RequirePackage[draft]{graphicx}\input{aa.tex}"
so the graphic files are read for their size information but not
incorporated into the PDF. (The jobname
option is there because
otherwise the output file would be graphicx.pdf, as
\RequirePackage
does an \input
of its own.)
If LaTeX finds an error in your document then it gives you an error
message and prompts you with a question mark, ?
. For instance,
running LaTeX on this file
\newcommand{\NP}{\ensuremath{\textbf{NP}}} The \PN{} problem is a million dollar one.
causes it show this, and wait for input.
! Undefined control sequence. l.5 The \PN {} problem is a million dollar one. ?
The simplest thing is to enter ‘x’ and <return>
and fix the
typo. You could instead enter ‘?’ and <return>
to see other
options.
There are two other error scenarios. The first is that you forgot to
include the \end{document}
or misspelled it. In this case
LaTeX gives you a ‘*’ prompt. You can get back to the command
line by typing \stop
and <return>
.
The last scenario is that you mistyped the file name. For instance,
instead of pdflatex test
you might type pdflatex tste
.
! I can't find file `tste'. <*> tste (Press Enter to retry, or Control-D to exit) Please type another input file name:
The simplest thing is to enter <Control>
and ‘d’ (holding
them down at the same time), and then retype the correct command line.