NAME¶
birthday - warn about upcoming birthdays and other events
SYNOPSIS¶
birthday [
-w|
-c] [
-f file]
[
-W defwarn] [
-M maxwarn] [
-m
minwarn] [
-l lines] [
-p weeks] [
-d
total] [
-i width]
DESCRIPTION¶
The
birthday command reads a file, by default
~/.birthdays, which
gives a list of events in the near future (see section
FILE FORMAT for
details). It can then produce either a list of events which are coming up
within the next few weeks, or a text-based calendar with a few lines for each
day.
OPTIONS¶
- -w
- Display a list of upcoming events. This is the default.
- -c
- Display a calendar, designed to be piped to lpr(1).
- -f file
- Read the events from file rather than ~/.birthdays. If
file is a single hyphen, read the events from the standard input
(usually the terminal).
List Options¶
- -W warn
- Warn warn days in advance, for entries that have no w flag
(see FILE FORMAT). If this switch is not specified, it
defaults to 21 days.
- -M max
- Warn at most max days in advance. This overrides any flag given in
the file.
- -m min
- Warn at least min days in advance. This overrides any flag given in
the file.
Calendar Options¶
- -l lines
- Print lines lines for every day.
- -p weeks
- Print weeks weeks on every page of the calendar. If set to
0, the default, disables page breaks.
- -d days
- Print the calendar for up to days days in advance.
- -i width
- Print the calendar width characters wide. This affects the length
of the lines separating each day, and the point at which events will be
word-wrapped.
Each line beginning with a hash sign, `
#', is a comment and will be
ignored. Lines beginning with an ampersand, `
&', are directives.
Currently there is only one such directive,
&include file,
which reads in a seperate file from your
.birthdays file.
file
should be given with an absolute path, which should not use the tilde notation
to specify your home directory.
Any other line specifies the name of a person or event, followed by an equals
sign and a date
(
DD/MM,
DD/MM/YY or
DD/MM/YYYY,
where the form
DD/MM/YY is assumed to give a date in the 20th century
and is now deprecated), and finally some extra options. These options are:
- bd
- This line is a birthday (the default). The year, if given, should be when
the person was born. A line designated as a birthday will produce output
like Erin has a birthday in 3 days' time or Jemima is 3 in 2
weeks' time.
- ann
- This line is an anniversary. The year, if given, should be the year in
which the thing happened, producing output like Pen exploded 3 years
ago tomorrow given a line such as Pen exploded=12/09/93
ann.
- ev
- This line is an event of some sort. If a year is given, the text will be
displayed in that year only; otherwise, it will be displayed every year.
The remaining time is simply appended to the text; for instance, the input
Easter=7/4/1996 ev would give rise to the text Easter in 1
week's time.
- wn
- Warn n days in advance of the date, rather than the default of 21
days or the number given with the -W flag.
- todate
- The event lasts until date, which should be in the same format as
for the date of the event.
- fordays
- The event lasts for days days.
DATE SPECIFICATION¶
The file format documented here handles dates in a couple of slightly
non-standard ways. Firstly, the dates are given in British format of
DD/MM/YYYY, as opposed to the more normal US format
MM/DD/YYYY.
Secondly, dates with a two-digit year are assumed to be in the 20th century
(19
xx), rather than taking the standard convention of assuming all
two-digit years less than 70 are in the 21st century. This is for reasons of
compatibility with older data files, since many people have birthdays before
1970, and the program was written before I came across the Y2K issues. :-( You
should probably avoid this format.
EXAMPLE¶
Joe Blow=25/04/1974
FILES¶
- ~/.birthdays
- Your default birthdays file.
SEE ALSO¶
cal(1)
BUGS¶
Both the "features" in the
DATE SPECIFICATION section could be
construed as bugs, and are mostly present for backwards compatibility.
The calendar mode should be a seperate program.
The program cannot warn more than one year in advance of anything.
AUTHOR¶
Andy Mortimer <andy.mortimer@zetnet.co.uk>