birthday man page on DragonFly

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birthday(1)							   birthday(1)

NAME
       birthday - warn about upcoming birthdays and other events

SYNOPSIS
       birthday [-w|-c] [-f  file]  [-W defwarn] [-M maxwarn] [-m minwarn] [-l
       lines] [-p weeks] [-d total] [-i width]

DESCRIPTION
       The birthday command reads a file, by default ~/.birthdays, which gives
       a  list	of  events  in	the  near  future (see section FILE FORMAT for
       details). It can then produce either a list of events which are	coming
       up within the next few weeks, or a text-based calendar with a few lines
       for each day.

OPTIONS
       -w     Display a list of upcoming events. This is the default.

       -c     Display a calendar, designed to be piped to lpr(1).

       -f file
	      Read the events from file rather than ~/.birthdays.  If file  is
	      a	 single	 hyphen, read the events from the standard input (usu‐
	      ally the terminal).

   List Options
       -W warn
	      Warn warn days in advance, for entries that have no w flag  (see
	      FILE FORMAT).   If  this switch is not specified, it defaults to
	      21 days.

       -M max Warn at most max days in advance. This overrides any flag	 given
	      in the file.

       -m min Warn at least min days in advance. This overrides any flag given
	      in the file.

   Calendar Options
       -l lines
	      Print lines lines for every day.

       -p weeks
	      Print weeks weeks on every page of the calendar. If  set	to  0,
	      the default, disables page breaks.

       -d days
	      Print the calendar for up to days days in advance.

       -i width
	      Print  the  calendar  width  characters  wide.  This affects the
	      length of the lines separating each day, and the point at	 which
	      events will be word-wrapped.

FILE FORMAT
       Each  line  beginning  with  a hash sign, `#', is a comment and will be
       ignored. Lines beginning with an ampersand, `&', are  directives.  Cur‐
       rently  there is only one such directive, &include file, which reads in
       a seperate file from your .birthdays file.  file should be  given  with
       an  absolute  path,  which should not use the tilde notation to specify
       your home directory.

       Any other line specifies the name of a person or event, followed by  an
       equals  sign  and a date (DD/MM, DD/MM/YY or DD/MM/YYYY, where the form
       DD/MM/YY is assumed to give a date in the 20th century and is now  dep‐
       recated), and finally some extra options. These options are:

       bd     This  line  is  a	 birthday  (the	 default). The year, if given,
	      should be when the person was  born.  A  line  designated	 as  a
	      birthday will produce output like Erin has a birthday in 3 days'
	      time or Jemima is 3 in 2 weeks' time.

       ann    This line is an anniversary. The year, if given, should  be  the
	      year  in	which  the  thing  happened, producing output like Pen
	      exploded	3  years  ago  tomorrow	 given	a  line	 such  as  Pen
	      exploded=12/09/93 ann.

       ev     This line is an event of some sort. If a year is given, the text
	      will be displayed in that year only; otherwise, it will be  dis‐
	      played  every year. The remaining time is simply appended to the
	      text; for instance, the input Easter=7/4/1996 ev would give rise
	      to the text Easter in 1 week's time.

       wn     Warn  n  days in advance of the date, rather than the default of
	      21 days or the number given with the -w flag.

       todate The event lasts until date, which should be in the  same	format
	      as for the date of the event.

       fordays
	      The event lasts for days days.

DATE SPECIFICATION
       The  file  format documented here handles dates in a couple of slightly
       non-standard ways.  Firstly, the dates are given in British  format  of
       DD/MM/YYYY, as opposed to the more normal US format MM/DD/YYYY.

       Secondly,  dates	 with  a  two-digit year are assumed to be in the 20th
       century (19xx), rather than taking the standard convention of  assuming
       all  two-digit years less than 70 are in the 21st century.  This is for
       reasons of compatibility with older data files, since many people  have
       birthdays before 1970, and the program was written before I came across
       the Y2K issues. :-(  You should probably avoid this format.

FILES
       ~/.birthdays
	      Your default birthdays file.

SEE ALSO
       cal(1)

BUGS
       Both the "features" in the DATE SPECIFICATION  section  could  be  con‐
       strued as bugs, and are mostly present for backwards compatibility.

       The calendar mode should be a seperate program.

       The program cannot warn more than one year in advance of anything.

AUTHOR
       Andy Mortimer <andy.mortimer@zetnet.co.uk>

								   birthday(1)
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