NAME
calendar - reminder service
SYNOPSIS
calendar [-ab] [-A num] [-B num] [-l num] [-w num] [-f calendarfile]
[-t [[[cc]yy][mm]]dd]
DESCRIPTION
The calendar utility checks the current directory or the directory
specified by the CALENDAR_DIR environment variable for a file named
calendar and displays lines that begin with either today’s date or
tomorrow’s. On Fridays, events on Friday through Monday are displayed.
The options are as follows:
-A num Print lines from today and next num days (forward, future).
Defaults to one.
-a Process the “calendar” files of all users and mail the results to
them. This requires superuser privileges.
-B num Print lines from today and previous num days (backward, past).
-b Enforce special date calculation mode for KOI8 calendars.
-l num Print lines from today and next num days (forward, future).
Defaults to one.
-w num Print lines from today and next num days, only if today is Friday
(forward, future). Defaults to two, which causes calendar to
print entries through the weekend on Fridays.
-f calendarfile
Use calendarfile as the default calendar file.
-t [[[cc]yy][mm]]dd
Act like the specified value is “today” instead of using the
current date.
To handle calendars in your national code table you can specify
“LANG=<locale_name>” in the calendar file as early as possible. To
handle national Easter names in the calendars, “Easter=<national_name>”
(for Catholic Easter) or “Paskha=<national_name>” (for Orthodox Easter)
can be used.
A special locale name exists: ‘utf-8’. Specifying “LANG=utf-8” indicates
that the dates will be read using the C locale, and the descriptions will
be encoded in UTF-8. This is usually used for the distributed calendar
files. The “CALENDAR” variable can be used to specify the style. Only
‘Julian’ and ‘Gregorian’ styles are currently supported. Use “CALENDAR=”
to return to the default (Gregorian).
To enforce special date calculation mode for Cyrillic calendars you
should specify “LANG=<local_name>” and “BODUN=<bodun_prefix>” where
<local_name> can be ru_RU.KOI8-R, uk_UA.KOI8-U or by_BY.KOI8-B.
Note that the locale is reset to the user’s default for each new file
that is read. This is so that locales from one file do not accidentally
carry over into another file.
Other lines should begin with a month and day. They may be entered in
almost any format, either numeric or as character strings. If proper
locale is set, national months and weekdays names can be used. A single
asterisk (‘*’) matches every month. A day without a month matches that
day of every week. A month without a day matches the first of that
month. Two numbers default to the month followed by the day. Lines with
leading tabs default to the last entered date, allowing multiple line
specifications for a single date. “Easter” (may be followed by a
positive or negative integer) is Easter for this year. “Paskha” (may be
followed by a positive or negative integer) is Orthodox Easter for this
year. Weekdays may be followed by “-4” ... “+5” (aliases last, first,
second, third, fourth) for moving events like “the last Monday in April”.
By convention, dates followed by an asterisk (‘*’) are not fixed, i.e.,
change from year to year.
Day descriptions start after the first <tab> character in the line; if
the line does not contain a <tab> character, it isn’t printed out. If
the first character in the line is a <tab> character, it is treated as
the continuation of the previous description.
The calendar file is preprocessed by cpp(1), allowing the inclusion of
shared files such as company holidays or meetings. If the shared file is
not referenced by a full pathname, cpp(1) searches in the current (or
home) directory first, and then in the directory directory /etc/calendar,
and finally in /usr/share/calendar. Empty lines and lines protected by
the C commenting syntax (/* ... */) are ignored.
Some possible calendar entries (a \t sequence denotes a <tab> character):
LANG=C
Easter=Ostern
#include <calendar.usholiday>
#include <calendar.birthday>
6/15\tJune 15 (if ambiguous, will default to month/day).
Jun. 15\tJune 15.
15 June\tJune 15.
Thursday\tEvery Thursday.
June\tEvery June 1st.
15 *\t15th of every month.
May Sun+2\tsecond Sunday in May (Muttertag)
04/SunLast\tlast Sunday in April,
\tsummer time in Europe
Easter\tEaster
Ostern-2\tGood Friday (2 days before Easter)
Paskha\tOrthodox Easter
FILES
calendar File in current directory.
~/.calendar Directory in the user’s home directory (which
calendar changes into, if it exists).
~/.calendar/calendar File to use if no calendar file exists in the
current directory.
~/.calendar/nomail calendar will not send mail if this file exists.
calendar.all International and national calendar files.
calendar.birthday Births and deaths of famous (and not-so-famous)
people.
calendar.christian Christian holidays (should be updated yearly by the
local system administrator so that roving holidays
are set correctly for the current year).
calendar.computer Days of special significance to computer people.
calendar.croatian Croatian calendar.
calendar.discord Discordian calendar (all rites reversed).
calendar.fictional Fantasy and fiction dates (mostly LOTR).
calendar.french French calendar.
calendar.german German calendar.
calendar.history Miscellaneous history.
calendar.holiday Other holidays (including the not-well-known,
obscure, and really obscure).
calendar.judaic Jewish holidays (should be updated yearly by the
local system administrator so that roving holidays
are set correctly for the current year).
calendar.music Musical events, births, and deaths (strongly
oriented toward rock n’ roll).
calendar.openbsd OpenBSD related events.
calendar.pagan Pagan holidays, celebrations and festivals.
calendar.russian Russian calendar.
calendar.space Cosmic history.
calendar.ushistory U.S. history.
calendar.usholiday U.S. holidays.
calendar.world World wide calendar.
SEE ALSO
at(1), cal(1), cpp(1), mail(1), cron(8)
STANDARDS
The calendar program previously selected lines which had the correct date
anywhere in the line. This is no longer true: the date is only
recognized when it occurs at the beginning of a line.
COMPATIBILITY
The calendar command will only display lines that use a <tab> character
to separate the date and description, or that begin with a <tab>. This is
different than in previous releases.
The -t flag argument syntax is from the original FreeBSD calendar
program.
The -l and -w flags are Debian-specific enhancements. Also, the original
calendar program did not accept 0 as an argument to the -A flag.
Using ‘utf-8’ as a locale name is a Debian-specific enhancement.
HISTORY
A calendar command appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX.
BUGS
calendar doesn’t handle all Jewish holidays or moon phases.