CALENDAR(1) BSD General Commands Manual CALENDAR(1)NAMEcalendar — reminder service
SYNOPSIScalendar [-a] [-A num] [-B num] [-F friday] [-f calendarfile]
[-t dd[.mm[.year]]] [-W num]
DESCRIPTION
The calendar utility checks the current directory for a file named
calendar and displays lines that begin with either today's date or tomor‐
row's. On the day before a weekend (normally Friday), events for the
next three days are displayed.
The following options are available:
-A num Print lines from today and the next num days (forward, future).
-a Process the ``calendar'' files of all users and mail the results
to them. This requires super-user privileges.
-B num Print lines from today and the previous num days (backward,
past).
-F friday
Specify which day of the week is ``Friday'' (the day before the
weekend begins). Default is 5.
-f calendarfile
Use calendarfile as the default calendar file.
-t dd[.mm[.year]]
For test purposes only: set date directly to argument values.
-W num Print lines from today and the next num days (forward, future).
Ignore weekends when calculating the number of days.
To handle calendars in your national code table you can specify
“LANG=<locale_name>” in the calendar file as early as possible. To han‐
dle national Easter names in the calendars “Easter=<national_name>” (for
Catholic Easter) or “Paskha=<national_name>” (for Orthodox Easter) can be
used.
Other lines should begin with a month and day. They may be entered in
almost any format, either numeric or as character strings. If the proper
locale is set, national month and weekday 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'', is Easter for this year, and may be followed by a positive or
negative integer.
``Paskha'', is Orthodox Easter for this year, and may be followed by a
positive or negative integer.
Weekdays may be followed by ``-4'' ... ``+5'' (aliases for 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 is not displayed. If the
first character in the line is a <tab> character, it is treated as a con‐
tinuation of the previous line.
The ``calendar'' file is preprocessed by cpp(1), allowing the inclusion
of shared files such as lists of 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
/usr/share/calendar. Empty lines and lines protected by the C commenting
syntax (/* ... */) are ignored.
Some possible calendar entries (<tab> characters highlighted by \t
sequence)
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
FILEScalendar file in current directory
~/.calendar calendar HOME directory. A chdir is done into this
directory if it exists.
~/.calendar/calendar
calendar file to use if no calendar file exists in
the current directory.
~/.calendar/nomail do not send mail if this file exists.
The following default calendar files are provided:
calendar.all File which includes all the default files.
calendar.australia Calendar of events in Australia.
calendar.birthday Births and deaths of famous (and not-so-famous)
people.
calendar.christian Christian holidays. This calendar should be
updated yearly by the local system administrator so
that roving holidays are set correctly for the cur‐
rent year.
calendar.computer Days of special significance to computer people.
calendar.croatian Calendar of events in Croatia.
calendar.french Calendar of events in France.
calendar.german Calendar of events in Germany.
calendar.history Everything else, mostly U.S. historical events.
calendar.holiday Other holidays, including the not-well-known,
obscure, and really obscure.
calendar.judaic Jewish holidays. This calendar 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 ori‐
ented toward rock 'n' roll.
calendar.newzealand Calendar of events in New Zealand.
calendar.russian Russian calendar.
calendar.southafrica Calendar of events in South Africa.
calendar.usholiday U.S. holidays. This calendar should be updated
yearly by the local system administrator so that
roving holidays are set correctly for the current
year.
calendar.world Includes all calendar files except for national
files.
COMPATIBILITY
The calendar program previously selected lines which had the correct date
anywhere in the line. This is no longer true, the date is only recog‐
nized when it occurs at the beginning of a line.
SEE ALSOat(1), cpp(1), mail(1), cron(8)HISTORY
A calendar command appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX.
BUGS
The calendar utility does not handle Jewish holidays and moon phases.
BSD June 13, 2002 BSD
