2. Using the Command Line Interface

Asciidoctor’s command line interface (CLI) is a drop-in replacement for the asciidoc.py command from the Python implementation.

If the Asciidoctor gem installed successfully, the asciidoctor command line interface (CLI) will be available on your PATH. To confirm that Asciidoctor is available, execute:

$ asciidoctor --version

The following information should be output in your terminal:

Asciidoctor 1.5.6.2 [https://asciidoctor.org]

To invoke Asciidoctor from the CLI and convert an .adoc file, execute:

$ asciidoctor <asciidoc_file>

This will use the built-in defaults for options and create a new file in the same directory as the input file, with the same base name, but with the .html extension.

There are many other options available, listed in CLI Options.

Full help is provided in the man page or via:

$ asciidoctor --help

There is also an asciidoctor-safe command, which turns on safe mode by default, preventing access to files outside the parent directory of the source file. This mode is very similar to the safe mode of asciidoc.py.