Cameron Katri's Manual Page Server

NAME

calendar — reminder service

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

The calendar utility checks the current directory for a file named calendar and displays lines that begin with either today's date or tomorrow'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 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 continuation 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

FILES

calendar

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 current year.

calendar.computer

Days of special significance to computer people.

calendar.croatian

Calendar of events in Croatia.

calendar.freebsd

Birthdays of FreeBSD committers.

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 oriented 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 recognized when it occurs at the beginning of a line.

SEE ALSO

at(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.