Comments on: Unix cal command: a key part of my calendaring solution

By: Lisa Harrold

Lisa Harrold — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 00:44:46 +0000

Why in AIX does my cal 2007 command only give me my calendar with 2 months across instead of 3. I want it 3 months across. Can anyone help?

By: Patrick Logan

Patrick Logan — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 19:42:46 +0000

Another useful one I use in Ubuntu or it just comes with gnome I think…

zenity –calendar

pops up a calendar for the current month but you can click around by month and by year.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 22:21:50 +0000

I do it all the time!

By: swisswuff

swisswuff — Thu, 20 Apr 2006 06:10:31 +0000

I run GeekTool on OS X. This allows me to run the output of terminal commands as part of the “desktop background”. Also, I disabled all Finder Icons on the desktop background using a utility called “Cocktail”. You can then have some logs to always run on your desktop, and also the output of “cal -y”. I would like to use a more modern version that also has the -m option (my weeks start on Monday), and Apple only includes an 1994 version of the cal command.

By: Heiko Liebfried

Heiko Liebfried — Wed, 22 Mar 2006 16:10:10 +0000

Cal is very useful. I like it too.
If you need a cli program for dates and appointments
you can use ‘when’. Perhaps now you don’t need separate paper calendars anymore.

http://www.lightandmatter.com/when/when.html

Another program i can recommend is DevTodo.
It has nothing to do with calendars, but i find it extremly useful.

Think of you have to clean up a directory.
When you enter it – DevTodo can remember you to do it!
It saves directory dependent todo lists.

http://swapoff.org/DevTodo

By: Tim Converse

Tim Converse — Sun, 22 Jan 2006 18:21:19 +0000

Wayne – if you’re literally typing ‘cal 07′, then you’re looking at the calendar for 7 A.D.

By: Tim Converse

Tim Converse — Sun, 22 Jan 2006 18:18:10 +0000

Yes, guilty too.

One of the nice things about the Mac’s transformation to Unix under the hood is that it now comes with cal support built in! :)

By: Beach

Beach — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 08:16:56 +0000

Hey Chad,

I have this calendar concept rolling around in my head… I’ve been talking with bradley and a ton of others about it. I’d like to run it by you when you have a moment, I’ll ping ya soon.

By: Wayne Goldsmith

Wayne Goldsmith — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 21:22:11 +0000

I didn’t know the cal command even existed… Never done much in Unix. That’s one reason I read other people’s blogs on a regualr basis!

Works great in OS X terminal. I noticed that to view 2006 data you need to say cal 07… I had to type cal 06 twice to realize i was looking at ‘05 data. This of course makes sense but it did surprise me the first time.

By: Chad Dickerson

Chad Dickerson — Fri, 13 Jan 2006 23:22:56 +0000

Now that you mention it, I’m pretty sure I wrote some code a long time ago that did just that (i.e. the shell out to cal and parsing).

I’m not a C programmer (and not that interested in become one at this point), but I’m guessing the cal source code is either amazingly elegant or the hack to beat all hacks.