CAL(1)

NAME
cal - display a calendar

SYNOPSIS
cal [options] [[[day] month] year]

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

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

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

-j, --julian
    Display Julian dates (days one-based, numbered from January 1).

-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
A single parameter specifies the year to be displayed; note the year must be fully specified: cal 89 will not display a calendar for 1989.

Two parameters denote the month (1 - 12) and year.

Three parameters 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.

A year starts on January 1. The first day of the week is determined by the locale.

The week numbering depends on the choice of the first day of the week. If Sunday (the default) is used for the first day of the week, then the customary North American numbering will be used, i.e. the first Sunday of the year starts the first week. If Monday is selected, then the ISO-8601 standard week numbering is used, where the first Thursday of the year 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 configuration.

BUGS

The cal program uses the 3rd of September 1752 as the date of the Gregorian calendar reformation -- that is when it happened in Great Britain and its colonies (including what is now the USA). Starting at that date, eleven days were eliminated by this reformation, so the calendar for that month is rather unusual. The actual historical dates at which the calendar reform happened in all the different countries (locales) are ignored.

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 ftp://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/.