calendar
CALENDAR(R)             System General Commands Manual             CALENDAR(R)

NAME
     calendar - reminder service

SYNOPSIS
     calendar [-a] [-A num] [-B num] [-f calendarfile] [-t dd[.mm[.year]]]
              [-l days] [-w days]

DESCRIPTION
     Calendar checks the current directory for a file named calendar and dis-
     plays lines that begin with either today's date or tomorrow's.  On Fri-
     days, events on Friday through Monday are displayed.  If there is no con-
     figuration file in the current directory, /etc/calendar/default is used
     (if present).

     The following options are available:

     -a      Process the ``calendar'' files of all users and mail the results
             to them.  This requires super-user privileges.

     -A num  Print lines from today and the next num days (forward, future).

     -B num  Print lines from today and the previous num days (backward,
             past).

     -f calendarfile
             Use calendarfile as the default calendar file.

     -t dd[.mm[.year]]
             For test purposes only: set date directly to argument values.

     -l days
             Causes the program to ``look ahead'' a given number of days
             (default one) from the specified date and display their entries
             as well.

     -w days
             Causes the program to add the specified number of days to the
             ``look ahead'' number if and only if the day specified is a Fri-
             day. The default value is two, which causes calendar to print
             entries through the weekend on Fridays.

     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.

     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(p), 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(p) searches in the
     current (or home) directory first, and then in the directory
     /etc/calendar/<yearnum>, then in /etc/calendar, then in
     /usr/share/calendar/<yearnum> and finally in /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


FILES
     calendar            file in current directory
     ~/calendar          file in $HOME
     ~/.calendar         calendar HOME directory.  calendar does a chdir 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.birthday   Births and deaths of famous (and not-so-famous) peo-
                         ple.
     calendar.christian  Christian holidays.  This calendar should be updated
                         yearly by the local system administrator so that rov-
                         ing holidays are set correctly for the current year.
     calendar.computer   Days of special significance to computer people.
     calendar.freebsd    Birthdays of FreeBSD committers.
     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 rov-
                         ing holidays are set correctly for the current year.
     calendar.discordian
                         Discordian holidays.
     calendar.music      Musical  events,  births, and deaths.  Strongly  ori-
                         ented  toward  rock 'n' roll.
     calendar.usholiday  U.S. holidays.  This calendar should be updated
                         yearly by the local system administrator so that rov-
                         ing holidays are set correctly for the current year.
     calendar.german     German calendar.
     calendar.russian    Russian calendar.
     calendar.croatian   Croatian calendar.
     calendar.hindu      Major Hindu holidays.  This calendar should be
                         updated yearly by the local system administrator so
                         that roving holidays are set correctly for the cur-
                         rent year.
     default             The system-wide default, which #includes all the pre-
                         vious calendars.

SEE ALSO
     at(t), cpp(p), mail(l), cron(n)

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.

     Having a directory per year is a Debian-specific improvement over the
     standard BSD calendar.

     Older calendar releases distributed with Debian supported the -t option
     which has been superseded by the -A and -B options and the ~/.calendar
     file which has been superseded by the ~/.calendar directory.

HISTORY
     A calendar command appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX.

BUGS
     Calendar doesn't handle Jewish holidays and moon phases.  The -A and -l
     options do very similar things.

BSD                             October 1, 2001                            BSD