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 synchroniza-
tion 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 cal-
endar 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.
--iso Display the proleptic Gregorian calendar exclusively.
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.
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: (ordi-
nal) 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 calen-
dar system. Calendar dates after reform use the Gregorian cal-
endar system. The argument val can be:
o 1752 - sets 3 September 1752 as the reform date (default).
This is when the Gregorian calendar reform was adopted by the
British Empire.
o 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 Gre-
gorian calendar, because dates prior to the calendar system's
creation use extrapolated values.
o iso - alias of gregorian. The ISO 8601 standard for the rep-
resentation of dates and times in information interchange
requires using the proleptic Gregorian calendar.
o 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 cal-
endar 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 (US or ISO-8601).
--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.
-V, --version
Display version information and exit.
-h, --help
Display help text and exit.
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", "yes-
terday", "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 high-
lighted if the calendar is displayed on a terminal. If no
parameters are specified, the current month's calendar is dis-
played.
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 then the ISO 8601
standard week numbering is used, where the first Thursday is in week
number 1.
COLORS
Implicit coloring can be disabled as follows:
touch /etc/terminal-colors.d/cal.disable
See terminal-colors.d(5) for more details about colorization configura-
tion.
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.
HISTORY
A cal command appeared in Version 6 AT&T UNIX.
AVAILABILITY
The cal command is part of the util-linux package and is available from
https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/.
util-linux January 2018 CAL(1)