1.2 Command-line usage

This section contains extra information about using LilyPond on the command line. This may be desirable to pass extra options to the program. In addition, there are certain extra ‘helper’ programs (such as midi2ly) which are only available on the command line.

By ‘command line’, we mean the command line in the operating system. Windows users might be more familiar with the terms ‘DOS shell’ or ‘command shell’. macOS users might be more familiar with the terms ‘terminal’ or ‘console’.

Describing how to use this part of an operating system is outside the scope of this manual; please consult other documentation on this topic if you are unfamiliar with the command line.

You should use a command line that reads and writes Unicode in UTF-8 encoding. Today, this is the standard on Unix-like operating systems including macOS and GNU/Linux. On Windows, you can select UTF-8 by selecting an appropriate codepage: call

chcp 65001

once on the command line before running lilypond.exe. Please consult the internet how to permanently activate UTF-8 for the Windows console.¹