CAL(1) User Commands CAL(1)

NAME
cal - display a calendar
SYNOPSIS
cal [options] [[[day] month] year]

cal [options] [timestamp|monthname]

DESCRIPTION
cal displays a simple calendar. If no arguments are specified, the current month is displayed.

The month may be specified as a number (1-12), as a month name or as an abbreviated month name
according to the current locales.

Two different calendar systems are used, Gregorian and Julian. These are nearly identical systems with
Gregorian making a small adjustment to the frequency of leap years; this facilitates improved
synchronization with solar events like the equinoxes. The Gregorian calendar reform was introduced in
1582, but its adoption continued up to 1923. By default cal uses the adoption date of 3 Sept 1752. From
that date forward the Gregorian calendar is displayed; previous dates use the Julian calendar system. 11
days were removed at the time of adoption to bring the calendar in sync with solar events. So Sept 1752 has
a mix of Julian and Gregorian dates by which the 2nd is followed by the 14th (the 3rd through the 13th are
absent).

Optionally, either the proleptic Gregorian calendar or the Julian calendar may be used exclusively. See
--reform below.
OPTIONS
-1, --one
Display single month output. (This is the default.)

-3, --three
Display three months spanning the date.

-n , --months number
Display number of months, starting from the month containing the date.

-S, --span
Display months spanning the date.

-s, --sunday
Display Sunday as the first day of the week.

-m, --monday
Display Monday as the first day of the week.

-v, --vertical
Display using a vertical layout (aka ncal(1) mode).

--iso
Display the proleptic Gregorian calendar exclusively. This option does not affect week numbers and
the first day of the week. See --reform below.

-j, --julian
Use day-of-year numbering for all calendars. These are also called ordinal days. Ordinal days range
from 1 to 366. This option does not switch from the Gregorian to the Julian calendar system, that is
controlled by the --reform option.

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Sometimes Gregorian calendars using ordinal dates are referred to as Julian calendars. This can be
confusing due to the many date related conventions that use Julian in their name: (ordinal) julian date,
julian (calendar) date, (astronomical) julian date, (modified) julian date, and more. This option is
named julian, because ordinal days are identified as julian by the POSIX standard. However, be aware
that cal also uses the Julian calendar system. See DESCRIPTION above.

--reform val
This option sets the adoption date of the Gregorian calendar reform. Calendar dates previous to reform
use the Julian calendar system. Calendar dates after reform use the Gregorian calendar system. The
argument val can be:
• 1752 - sets 3 September 1752 as the reform date (default). This is when the Gregorian
calendar reform was adopted by the British Empire.
• gregorian - display Gregorian calendars exclusively. This special placeholder sets the reform
date below the smallest year that cal can use; meaning all calendar output uses the Gregorian
calendar system. This is called the proleptic Gregorian calendar, because dates prior to the
calendar system’s creation use extrapolated values.
• iso - alias of gregorian. The ISO 8601 standard for the representation of dates and times in
information interchange requires using the proleptic Gregorian calendar.
• julian - display Julian calendars exclusively. This special placeholder sets the reform date
above the largest year that cal can use; meaning all calendar output uses the Julian calendar
system.

See DESCRIPTION above.

-y, --year
Display a calendar for the whole year.

-Y, --twelve
Display a calendar for the next twelve months.

-w, --week[=number]
Display week numbers in the calendar according to the US or ISO-8601 format. If a number is
specified, the requested week will be printed in the desired or current year. The number may be
overwritten if day and month are also specified.

See the NOTES section for more details.

--color[=when]
Colorize the output. The optional argument when can be auto, never or always. If the when argument
is omitted, it defaults to auto. The colors can be disabled; for the current built-in default see the
--help output. See also the COLORS section.

-c, --columns=columns
Number of columns to use. auto uses as many as fit the terminal.

-h, --help
Display help text and exit.

-V, --version
Display version and exit.

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PARAMETERS
Single digits-only parameter (e.g., 'cal 2020')
Specifies the year to be displayed; note the year must be fully specified: cal 89 will not display a
calendar for 1989.

Single string parameter (e.g., 'cal tomorrow' or 'cal August')

Specifies timestamp or a month name (or abbreviated name) according to the current locales.

The special placeholders are accepted when parsing timestamp, "now" may be used to refer to the
current time, "today", "yesterday", "tomorrow" refer to of the current day, the day before or the next
day, respectively.

The relative date specifications are also accepted, in this case "+" is evaluated to the current time plus
the specified time span. Correspondingly, a time span that is prefixed with "-" is evaluated to the
current time minus the specified time span, for example '+2days'. Instead of prefixing the time span
with "+" or "-", it may also be suffixed with a space and the word "left" or "ago" (for example '1 week
ago').

Two parameters (e.g., 'cal 11 2020')

Denote the month (1 - 12) and year.

Three parameters (e.g., 'cal 25 11 2020')

Denote the day (1-31), month and year, and the day will be highlighted if the calendar is displayed on
a terminal. If no parameters are specified, the current month’s calendar is displayed.
NOTES
A year starts on January 1. The first day of the week is determined by the locale or the --sunday and
--monday options.

The week numbering depends on the choice of the first day of the week. If it is Sunday then the customary
North American numbering is used, where 1 January is in week number 1. If it is Monday (-m) then the
ISO 8601 standard week numbering is used, where the first Thursday is in week number 1.
COLORS
The output colorization is implemented by terminal-colors.d(5) functionality. Implicit coloring can be
disabled by an empty file

/etc/terminal-colors.d/cal.disable

for the cal command or for all tools by

/etc/terminal-colors.d/disable

Since version 2.41, the $NO_COLOR environment variable is also supported to disable output colorization
unless explicitly enabled by a command-line option.

The user-specific $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/terminal-colors.d or $HOME/.config/terminal-colors.d

overrides the global setting.

Note that the output colorization may be enabled by default, and in this case terminal-colors.d directories
do not have to exist yet.

The logical color names supported by cal are:

today
The current day.

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weeknumber
The week number requested by the --week=<number> command line option.

weeks
The number of the week.

header
The header of a month.

workday
Days that fall within the work-week.

weekend
Days that fall outside the work-week.

For example:

echo -e 'weekend 35\ntoday 1;41\nheader yellow' >

$HOME/.config/terminal-colors.d/cal.scheme
HISTORY
A cal command appeared in Version 6 AT&T UNIX.
BUGS
The default cal output uses 3 September 1752 as the Gregorian calendar reform date. The historical reform
dates for the other locales, including its introduction in October 1582, are not implemented.

Alternative calendars, such as the Umm al-Qura, the Solar Hijri, the Ge’ez, or the lunisolar Hindu, are not
supported.
SEE ALSO
terminal-colors.d(5)
REPORTING BUGS
For bug reports, use the issue tracker <https://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/issues>.
AVAILABILITY
The cal command is part of the util-linux package which can be downloaded from Linux Kernel Archive
<https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/>.

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