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
       synchronization 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
       calendar 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.

       -v, --vertical
	   Display using a vertical layout (aka ncal(1) mode).

       --iso
	   Display the proleptic Gregorian calendar exclusively. This option
	   does not affect week numbers and the first day of the week. 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: (ordinal) 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 calendar
	   system. Calendar dates after reform use the Gregorian calendar
	   system. The argument val can be:

	   •   1752 - sets 3 September 1752 as the reform date (default). This
	       is when the Gregorian calendar reform was adopted by the
	       British Empire.

	   •   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
	       Gregorian calendar, because dates prior to the calendar
	       system’s creation use extrapolated values.

	   •   iso - alias of gregorian. The ISO 8601 standard for the
	       representation of dates and times in information interchange
	       requires using the proleptic Gregorian calendar.

	   •   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
	       calendar 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 according to the US or
	   ISO-8601 format. If a number is specified, the requested week will
	   be printed in the desired or current year. The number may be
	   overwritten if day and month are also specified.

	   See the NOTES section for more details.

       --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.

       -c, --columns=columns
	   Number of columns to use. auto uses as many as fit the terminal.

       -h, --help
	   Display help text and exit.

       -V, --version
	   Display version 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", "yesterday",
	   "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
	   highlighted if the calendar is displayed on a terminal. If no
	   parameters are specified, the current month’s calendar is
	   displayed.

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 (-m) then the ISO
       8601 standard week numbering is used, where the first Thursday is in
       week number 1.

COLORS
       The output colorization is implemented by terminal-colors.d(5)
       functionality.  Implicit coloring can be disabled by an empty file

	  /etc/terminal-colors.d/cal.disable

       for the cal command or for all tools by

	  /etc/terminal-colors.d/disable

       Since version 2.41, the $NO_COLOR environment variable is also
       supported to disable output colorization unless explicitly enabled by a
       command-line option.

       The user-specific $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/terminal-colors.d or
       $HOME/.config/terminal-colors.d overrides the global setting.

       Note that the output colorization may be enabled by default, and in
       this case terminal-colors.d directories do not have to exist yet.

       The logical color names supported by cal are:

       today
	   The current day.

       weeknumber
	   The week number requested by the --week=<number> command line
	   option.

       weeks
	   The number of the week.

       header
	   The header of a month.

       workday
	   Days that fall within the work-week.

       weekend
	   Days that fall outside the work-week.

       For example:

	  echo -e 'weekend 35\ntoday 1;41\nheader yellow' >
	  $HOME/.config/terminal-colors.d/cal.scheme

HISTORY
       A cal command appeared in Version 6 AT&T UNIX.

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.

SEE ALSO
       terminal-colors.d(5)

REPORTING BUGS
       For bug reports, use the issue tracker
       <https://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/issues>.

AVAILABILITY
       The cal command is part of the util-linux package which can be
       downloaded from Linux Kernel Archive
       <https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/>.

util-linux 2.41.2		  2025-09-22				CAL(1)