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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.
-versionShow 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.
-helpGive a brief usage message that is useful as a prompt and exit.
-interaction=modeTeX 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=stringSet 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=directoryWrite files in the directory directory. It must already exist.
--shell-escape--no-shell-escape--enable-write18--disable-write18Enable or disable \write18{shell_command}
(see \write18). 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-errorStop processing at the first error.
-file-line-error-no-file-line-errorEnable or disable filename:lineno:error-style
error messages. These are only available with TeX Live or MacTeX.