CALENDAR(1)                        BSD General Commands Manual                        CALENDAR(1)

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. (same
             as -l)

     -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. (same
             as -A)

     -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 Fri‐
             days.

     -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.  If yy is
             specified, but cc is not, a value for yy between 69 and 99 results in a cc value of
             19.  Otherwise, a cc value of 20 is used.

     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 week‐
     days 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 direc‐
     tory /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 cur‐
                           rent 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 adminis‐
                           trator 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.

BSD                                       March 18, 2025                                      BSD