1CAL(1)                           User Commands                          CAL(1)
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3
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NAME

6       cal - display a calendar
7

SYNOPSIS

9       cal [options] [[[day] month] year]
10
11       cal [options] [timestamp|monthname]
12

DESCRIPTION

14       cal displays a simple calendar. If no arguments are specified, the
15       current month is displayed.
16
17       The month may be specified as a number (1-12), as a month name or as an
18       abbreviated month name according to the current locales.
19
20       Two different calendar systems are used, Gregorian and Julian. These
21       are nearly identical systems with Gregorian making a small adjustment
22       to the frequency of leap years; this facilitates improved
23       synchronization with solar events like the equinoxes. The Gregorian
24       calendar reform was introduced in 1582, but its adoption continued up
25       to 1923. By default cal uses the adoption date of 3 Sept 1752. From
26       that date forward the Gregorian calendar is displayed; previous dates
27       use the Julian calendar system. 11 days were removed at the time of
28       adoption to bring the calendar in sync with solar events. So Sept 1752
29       has a mix of Julian and Gregorian dates by which the 2nd is followed by
30       the 14th (the 3rd through the 13th are absent).
31
32       Optionally, either the proleptic Gregorian calendar or the Julian
33       calendar may be used exclusively. See --reform below.
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OPTIONS

36       -1, --one
37           Display single month output. (This is the default.)
38
39       -3, --three
40           Display three months spanning the date.
41
42       -n , --months number
43           Display number of months, starting from the month containing the
44           date.
45
46       -S, --span
47           Display months spanning the date.
48
49       -s, --sunday
50           Display Sunday as the first day of the week.
51
52       -m, --monday
53           Display Monday as the first day of the week.
54
55       -v, --vertical
56           Display using a vertical layout (aka ncal(1) mode).
57
58       --iso
59           Display the proleptic Gregorian calendar exclusively. This option
60           does not affect week numbers and the first day of the week. See
61           --reform below.
62
63       -j, --julian
64           Use day-of-year numbering for all calendars. These are also called
65           ordinal days. Ordinal days range from 1 to 366. This option does
66           not switch from the Gregorian to the Julian calendar system, that
67           is controlled by the --reform option.
68
69           Sometimes Gregorian calendars using ordinal dates are referred to
70           as Julian calendars. This can be confusing due to the many date
71           related conventions that use Julian in their name: (ordinal) julian
72           date, julian (calendar) date, (astronomical) julian date,
73           (modified) julian date, and more. This option is named julian,
74           because ordinal days are identified as julian by the POSIX
75           standard. However, be aware that cal also uses the Julian calendar
76           system. See DESCRIPTION above.
77
78       --reform val
79           This option sets the adoption date of the Gregorian calendar
80           reform. Calendar dates previous to reform use the Julian calendar
81           system. Calendar dates after reform use the Gregorian calendar
82           system. The argument val can be:
83
841752 - sets 3 September 1752 as the reform date (default). This
85               is when the Gregorian calendar reform was adopted by the
86               British Empire.
87
88gregorian - display Gregorian calendars exclusively. This
89               special placeholder sets the reform date below the smallest
90               year that cal can use; meaning all calendar output uses the
91               Gregorian calendar system. This is called the proleptic
92               Gregorian calendar, because dates prior to the calendar
93               system’s creation use extrapolated values.
94
95iso - alias of gregorian. The ISO 8601 standard for the
96               representation of dates and times in information interchange
97               requires using the proleptic Gregorian calendar.
98
99julian - display Julian calendars exclusively. This special
100               placeholder sets the reform date above the largest year that
101               cal can use; meaning all calendar output uses the Julian
102               calendar system.
103
104       See DESCRIPTION above.
105
106       -y, --year
107           Display a calendar for the whole year.
108
109       -Y, --twelve
110           Display a calendar for the next twelve months.
111
112       -w, --week[=number]
113           Display week numbers in the calendar (US or ISO-8601). See NOTES
114           section for more details.
115
116       --color[=when]
117           Colorize the output. The optional argument when can be auto, never
118           or always. If the when argument is omitted, it defaults to auto.
119           The colors can be disabled; for the current built-in default see
120           the --help output. See also the COLORS section.
121
122       -V, --version
123           Display version information and exit.
124
125       -h, --help
126           Display help text and exit.
127

PARAMETERS

129       Single digits-only parameter (e.g., 'cal 2020')
130           Specifies the year to be displayed; note the year must be fully
131           specified: cal 89 will not display a calendar for 1989.
132
133       Single string parameter (e.g., 'cal tomorrow' or 'cal August')
134           Specifies timestamp or a month name (or abbreviated name) according
135           to the current locales.
136
137           The special placeholders are accepted when parsing timestamp, "now"
138           may be used to refer to the current time, "today", "yesterday",
139           "tomorrow" refer to of the current day, the day before or the next
140           day, respectively.
141
142           The relative date specifications are also accepted, in this case
143           "+" is evaluated to the current time plus the specified time span.
144           Correspondingly, a time span that is prefixed with "-" is evaluated
145           to the current time minus the specified time span, for example
146           '+2days'. Instead of prefixing the time span with "+" or "-", it
147           may also be suffixed with a space and the word "left" or "ago" (for
148           example '1 week ago').
149
150       Two parameters (e.g., 'cal 11 2020')
151           Denote the month (1 - 12) and year.
152
153       Three parameters (e.g., 'cal 25 11 2020')
154           Denote the day (1-31), month and year, and the day will be
155           highlighted if the calendar is displayed on a terminal. If no
156           parameters are specified, the current month’s calendar is
157           displayed.
158

NOTES

160       A year starts on January 1. The first day of the week is determined by
161       the locale or the --sunday and --monday options.
162
163       The week numbering depends on the choice of the first day of the week.
164       If it is Sunday then the customary North American numbering is used,
165       where 1 January is in week number 1. If it is Monday (-m) then the ISO
166       8601 standard week numbering is used, where the first Thursday is in
167       week number 1.
168

COLORS

170       Implicit coloring can be disabled as follows:
171
172          touch /etc/terminal-colors.d/cal.disable
173
174       See terminal-colors.d(5) for more details about colorization
175       configuration.
176

HISTORY

178       A cal command appeared in Version 6 AT&T UNIX.
179

BUGS

181       The default cal output uses 3 September 1752 as the Gregorian calendar
182       reform date. The historical reform dates for the other locales,
183       including its introduction in October 1582, are not implemented.
184
185       Alternative calendars, such as the Umm al-Qura, the Solar Hijri, the
186       Ge’ez, or the lunisolar Hindu, are not supported.
187

REPORTING BUGS

189       For bug reports, use the issue tracker at
190       https://github.com/karelzak/util-linux/issues.
191

AVAILABILITY

193       The cal command is part of the util-linux package which can be
194       downloaded from Linux Kernel Archive
195       <https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/>.
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199util-linux 2.37.2                 2021-06-02                            CAL(1)
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