Americas

  • United States
sandra_henrystocker
Unix Dweeb

Working with calendars on Linux

How-To
Mar 26, 20186 mins
LinuxRed HatUbuntu

With calendars on Linux, you can get more than just reminders of what day it is. Commands such as date, cal, ncal and calendar provide helpful information.

calendars
Credit: Sandra Henry-Stocker

Linux systems can provide more help with your schedule than just reminding you what day today is. You have a lot of options for displaying calendars — some that are likely to prove helpful and others that just might boggle your mind.

date

To begin, you probably know that you can show the current date with the date command.

$ date
Mon Mar 26 08:01:41 EDT 2018

cal and ncal

You can show the entire month with the cal command. With no arguments, cal displays the current month and, by default, highlights the current day by reversing the foreground and background colors.

$ cal
     March 2018
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
             1  2  3
 4  5  6  7  8  9 10
11 12 13 14 15 16 17
18 19 20 21 22 23 24
25 26 27 28 29 30 31

If you want to display the current month in a “sideways” format, you can use the ncal command.

$ ncal
    March 2018
Su     4 11 18 25
Mo     5 12 19 26
Tu     6 13 20 27
We     7 14 21 28
Th  1  8 15 22 29
Fr  2  9 16 23 30
Sa  3 10 17 24 31

That command can be especially useful if, for example, you just want to see the dates for some particular day of the week.

$ ncal | grep Th
Th  1  8 15 22 29

The ncal command can also display the entire year in the “sideways” format. Just provide the year along with the command.

$ ncal 2018
                                  2018
    January           February          March             April
Su     7 14 21 28        4 11 18 25        4 11 18 25     1  8 15 22 29
Mo  1  8 15 22 29        5 12 19 26        5 12 19 26     2  9 16 23 30
Tu  2  9 16 23 30        6 13 20 27        6 13 20 27     3 10 17 24
We  3 10 17 24 31        7 14 21 28        7 14 21 28     4 11 18 25
Th  4 11 18 25        1  8 15 22        1  8 15 22 29     5 12 19 26
Fr  5 12 19 26        2  9 16 23        2  9 16 23 30     6 13 20 27
Sa  6 13 20 27        3 10 17 24        3 10 17 24 31     7 14 21 28
...

You can also display the entire year with cal. Just remember that you need all four digits for the year. If you type “cal 18”, you’ll get a calendar year for 18 AD, not 2018.

$ cal 2018
                            2018
      January               February               March
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa  Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa  Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
    1  2  3  4  5  6               1  2  3               1  2  3
 7  8  9 10 11 12 13   4  5  6  7  8  9 10   4  5  6  7  8  9 10
14 15 16 17 18 19 20  11 12 13 14 15 16 17  11 12 13 14 15 16 17
21 22 23 24 25 26 27  18 19 20 21 22 23 24  18 19 20 21 22 23 24
28 29 30 31           25 26 27 28           25 26 27 28 29 30 31


       April                  May                   June
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa  Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa  Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
 1  2  3  4  5  6  7         1  2  3  4  5                  1  2
 8  9 10 11 12 13 14   6  7  8  9 10 11 12   3  4  5  6  7  8  9
15 16 17 18 19 20 21  13 14 15 16 17 18 19  10 11 12 13 14 15 16
22 23 24 25 26 27 28  20 21 22 23 24 25 26  17 18 19 20 21 22 23
29 30                 27 28 29 30 31        24 25 26 27 28 29 30


        July                 August              September
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa  Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa  Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
 1  2  3  4  5  6  7            1  2  3  4                     1
 8  9 10 11 12 13 14   5  6  7  8  9 10 11   2  3  4  5  6  7  8
15 16 17 18 19 20 21  12 13 14 15 16 17 18   9 10 11 12 13 14 15
22 23 24 25 26 27 28  19 20 21 22 23 24 25  16 17 18 19 20 21 22
29 30 31              26 27 28 29 30 31     23 24 25 26 27 28 29
                                            30

      October               November              December
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa  Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa  Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
    1  2  3  4  5  6               1  2  3                     1
 7  8  9 10 11 12 13   4  5  6  7  8  9 10   2  3  4  5  6  7  8
14 15 16 17 18 19 20  11 12 13 14 15 16 17   9 10 11 12 13 14 15
21 22 23 24 25 26 27  18 19 20 21 22 23 24  16 17 18 19 20 21 22
28 29 30 31           25 26 27 28 29 30     23 24 25 26 27 28 29
                                            30 31

For a particular year and month, use the -d option win a command like this.

$ cal -d 1949-03
     March 1949
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
       1  2  3  4  5
 6  7  8  9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28 29 30 31

Another potentially useful calendaring option is the cal command’s -j option. Let’s take a look at what that shows you.

$ cal -j
        March 2018
 Su  Mo  Tu  We  Th  Fr  Sa
                 60  61  62
 63  64  65  66  67  68  69
 70  71  72  73  74  75  76
 77  78  79  80  81  82  83
 84  85  86  87  88  89  90

“What???” you might be asking. OK, that -j option is displaying Julian dates — the numeric day of the year that runs from 1 to 365 most years. So, 1 is January 1st and 32 is February 1st. The command cal -j 2018 will show you the entire year, ending like this:

$ cal -j 2018 | tail -9

         November                     December
 Su  Mo  Tu  We  Th  Fr  Sa   Su  Mo  Tu  We  Th  Fr  Sa
                305 306 307                          335
308 309 310 311 312 313 314  336 337 338 339 340 341 342
315 316 317 318 319 320 321  343 344 345 346 347 348 349
322 323 324 325 326 327 328  350 351 352 353 354 355 356
329 330 331 332 333 334      357 358 359 360 361 362 363
                             364 365

This kind of display might help remind you of how many days have gone by since you made that New Year’s resolution that you haven’t yet acted on.

Run a similar command for 2020, and you’ll note that it’s a leap year.

$ cal -j 2020 | tail -9

         November                     December
 Su  Mo  Tu  We  Th  Fr  Sa   Su  Mo  Tu  We  Th  Fr  Sa
306 307 308 309 310 311 312          336 337 338 339 340
313 314 315 316 317 318 319  341 342 343 344 345 346 347
320 321 322 323 324 325 326  348 349 350 351 352 353 354
327 328 329 330 331 332 333  355 356 357 358 359 360 361
334 335                      362 363 364 365 366

calendar

Another interesting and potentially overwhelming command can inform you about holidays. This command has a lot of options, but let’s just say that you’d like to see a list of upcoming holidays and noteworthy days. The calendar’s -l option allows you to select how many days you want to see beyond today, so 0 means “today only”.

$ calendar -l 0
Mar 26  Benjamin Thompson born, 1753, Count Rumford; physicist
Mar 26  David Packard died, 1996; age of 83
Mar 26  Popeye statue unveiled, Crystal City TX Spinach Festival, 1937
Mar 26  Independence Day in Bangladesh
Mar 26  Prince Jonah Kuhio Kalanianaole Day in Hawaii
Mar 26* Seward's Day in Alaska (last Monday)
Mar 26  Emerson, Lake, and Palmer record "Pictures at an Exhibition" live, 1971
Mar 26  Ludwig van Beethoven dies in Vienna, Austria, 1827
Mar 26  Bonne fête aux Lara !
Mar 26  Aujourd'hui, c'est la St(e) Ludger.
Mar 26  N'oubliez pas les Larissa !
Mar 26  Ludwig van Beethoven in Wien gestorben, 1827
Mar 26  Emánuel

For most of us, that’s a bit more celebrating than we can manage in a single day. If you’re seeing something like this, you can blame it on your calendar.all file that’s telling the system what international calendars you’d like to include. You can, of course, pare this down by removing some of the lines in this file that include other files. The lines look like these:

#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 
#include 

Say we cut our display down to world calendars only by removing all but the first #include line shown above. We’d then see this:

$ calendar -l 0
Mar 26  Benjamin Thompson born, 1753, Count Rumford; physicist
Mar 26  David Packard died, 1996; age of 83
Mar 26  Popeye statue unveiled, Crystal City TX Spinach Festival, 1937
Mar 26  Independence Day in Bangladesh
Mar 26  Prince Jonah Kuhio Kalanianaole Day in Hawaii
Mar 26* Seward's Day in Alaska (last Monday)
Mar 26  Emerson, Lake, and Palmer record "Pictures at an Exhibition" live, 1971
Mar 26  Ludwig van Beethoven dies in Vienna, Austria, 1827

Clearly, the world calendar’s special days are quite numerous. A display like this could, however, keep you from forgetting the all-important Popeye statue unveiling day and its role in observing the “spinach capital of the world.”

A more useful calendaring choice might be to put work-related calendars in a special file and use that calendar in the calendar.all file to determine what events you will see when you run the command.

$ cat /usr/share/calendar/calendar.all
/*
 * International and national calendar files
 *
 * This is the calendar master file.  In the standard setup, it is
 * included by /etc/calendar/default, so you can make any system-wide
 * changes there and they will be kept when you upgrade.  If you want
 * to edit this file, copy it into /etc/calendar/calendar.all and
 * edit it there.
 *
 */

#ifndef _calendar_all_
#define _calendar_all_

#include 
#include 			

The format for calendar files is very simple — mm/dd for the date, a tab, and the event's description.

$ cat calendar.work
03/26   Describe how the cal and calendar commands work
03/27   Throw a party!

notes and nostalgia

Note that the calendar command might not be available for all Linux distributions. You might have to remember the Popeye statue unveiling day on your own.

And in case you're wondering, you can display a calendar as far ahead as the year 9999 — even for the prophetic 2525.

sandra_henrystocker
Unix Dweeb

Sandra Henry-Stocker has been administering Unix systems for more than 30 years. She describes herself as "USL" (Unix as a second language) but remembers enough English to write books and buy groceries. She lives in the mountains in Virginia where, when not working with or writing about Unix, she's chasing the bears away from her bird feeders.

The opinions expressed in this blog are those of Sandra Henry-Stocker and do not necessarily represent those of IDG Communications, Inc., its parent, subsidiary or affiliated companies.

More from this author