Command Line Interface (CLI)

You can use stylelint on the command line. For example:

npx stylelint "**/*.css"

Use npx stylelint --help to print the CLI documentation.

Options

In addition to the standard options, the CLI accepts:

--allow-empty-input, --aei

The process exits without throwing an error when glob pattern matches no files.

--color, --no-color

Force enabling/disabling of color.

--ignore-pattern, --ip

Pattern of files to ignore (in addition to those in .stylelintignore).

--output-file, -o

Path of file to write a report. stylelint outputs the report to the specified filename in addition to the standard output.

--print-config

Print the configuration for the given path. stylelint outputs the configuration used for the file passed.

--quiet, -q

Only register violations for rules with an “error”-level severity (ignore “warning”-level).

--stdin

Accept stdin input even if it is empty.

--version, -v

Show the currently installed version of stylelint.

Usage examples

The CLI expects input as either a file glob or process.stdin. It outputs formatted results into process.stdout.

Be sure to include quotation marks around file globs.

Example A - recursive

Recursively linting all .css files in the foo directory:

stylelint "foo/**/*.css"

Example B - stdin

Linting stdin:

echo "a { color: pink; }" | stylelint

Example C - negation

Linting all .css files except those within docker subfolders, using negation in the input glob:

stylelint "**/*.css" "!**/docker/**"

Example D - caching

Caching processed .scss files foo directory:

stylelint "foo/**/*.scss" --cache --cache-location "/Users/user/.stylelintcache/"

Example E - writing a report

Linting all .css files in the foo directory, then writing the output to myTestReport.txt:

stylelint "foo/*.css" --output-file myTestReport.txt

Example F - specifying a config

Using bar/mySpecialConfig.json as config to lint all .css files in the foo directory and any of its subdirectories:

stylelint "foo/**/*.css" --config bar/mySpecialConfig.json

Exit codes

The CLI can exit the process with the following exit codes:

• 1 - something unknown went wrong
• 2 - there was at least one rule violation or CLI flag error
• 78 - there was some problem with the configuration file