8 Options

Type asy -h to see the full list of command line options supported by Asymptote:

Usage: asy [options] [file ...]

Options: 
-V,-View              View output; command-line only
-a,-align C|B|T|Z     Center, Bottom, Top, or Zero page alignment [Center]
-autoplain            Enable automatic importing of plain [true]
-autorotate           Enable automatic PDF page rotation [false]
-batchMask            Mask fpu exceptions in batch mode [false]
-batchView            View output in batch mode [false]
-bw                   Convert all colors to black and white [false]
-c,-clearGUI          Clear GUI operations [false]
-cmyk                 Convert rgb colors to cmyk [false]
-d,-debug             Enable debugging messages [false]
-x,-deconstruct X     Deconstruct into transparent GIF objects magnified by X
-gray                 Convert all colors to grayscale [false]
-h,-help              Show summary of options; command-line only
-historylines n       Retain n lines of history [1000]
-i,-ignoreGUI         Ignore GUI operations [false]
-inlinetex            Generate inline tex code [false]
-interactiveMask      Mask fpu exceptions in interactive mode [true]
-interactiveView      View output in interactive mode [true]
-k,-keep              Keep intermediate files [false]
-l,-listvariables     List available global functions and variables [false]
-localhistory         Use a local interactive history file [false]
-m,-mask              Mask fpu exceptions; command-line only
-multipleView         View output from multiple batch-mode files [false]
-O,-offset pair       PostScript offset [(0,0)]
-f,-outformat format  Convert each output file to specified format [eps]
-o,-outname name      Alternative output name for first file
-p,-parseonly         Parse file [false]
-prompt string        Prompt ["> "]
-q,-quiet             Suppress welcome message [false]
-rgb                  Convert cmyk colors to rgb [false]
-safe                 Disable system call; command-line only [true]
-scroll n             Scroll standard output n lines at a time [0]
-tabcompletion        Interactive prompt auto-completion [true]
-tex engine           TeX engine ("latex|pdflatex|tex|pdftex|none") ["latex"]
-s,-translate         Show translated virtual machine code [false]
-twice                Run LaTeX twice (to resolve references) [false]
-unsafe               Enable system call; command-line only [false]
-u,-user x            General purpose user string  [""]
-v,-verbose           Increase verbosity level [0]

All boolean options, except for -unsafe, -safe, and help, can be negated by prepending no to the option name.

If no arguments are given, Asymptote runs in interactive mode (see Interactive mode). In this case, the default output file is out.eps.

If - is given as the file argument, Asymptote reads from standard input.

If multiple files are specified, they are treated as separate Asymptote runs.

Default option values may be entered as Asymptote code in a configuration file named config.asy (or the file specified by the environment variable ASYMPTOTE_CONFIG or -config option). Asymptote will look for this file in its usual search path. Typically the configuration file is placed in the .asy directory in the user's home directory (%USERPROFILE%\.asy under MSDOS). Configuration variables are accessed using the long form of the option names:

import settings;
outformat="pdf";
batchView=false;
interactiveView=true;
batchMask=false;
interactiveMask=true;

The default output format is EPS for the (default) latex tex engine and PDF for the pdflatex tex engine. An alternative output format (without antialiasing) may be produced by using the -f format option. This supports any format supported by the ImageMagick convert program (version 6.2.4 or later recommended; an Invalid Parameter error message indicates that the MSDOS utility convert is being used instead of the one that comes with ImageMagick). To give specific options to the convert program, call convert manually. This example enables antialiasing and produces a tiff format at double the usual size:

asy -o - venn | convert -density 288x288 -geometry 100%x eps:- venn.tiff

If the option -unsafe is given, Asymptote runs in unsafe mode. This enables the int system(string s) call, allowing one to execute arbitrary shell commands. The default mode, -safe, disables this call.

A PostScript offset may be specified as a pair (in bp units) with the -O option:

asy -O 0,0 file

The default offset is zero. The default value of the page alignment setting align is Center.

The -u option may be used to specify arbitrary Asymptote code on the command line as a string. It is not necessary to terminate the string with a semicolon. Multiple -u options are executed in the order they are given. Command-line code like -u x=sqrt(2) can be executed within a module like this:

real x;
access settings;
usersetting();
write(x);

When the -l option is used with file arguments, it only lists global functions and variables defined in the specified file(s).

Additional debugging output is produced with each additional -v option:

-v

Display top-level module and final output file names.

-vv

Also display imported and included module names and final LaTeX and dvips processing information.

-vvv

Also output LaTeX bidirectional pipe diagnostics.

-vvvv

Also output knot guide solver diagnostics.

-vvvvv

Also output Asymptote traceback diagnostics.