1 .TH bday 1

2 .SH NAME

3 bday \- inform about upcoming birthdays and other events

4 .SH SYNOPSIS

5 .BR bday\ [ -f

6 .IR file ]

7 .RB [ -W

8 .IR defwarn ]

9

10 .SH DESCRIPTION

11 The

12 .B bday

13 command reads a file, by default

14 .IR ~/.birthdays ,

15 which gives a list of birthdays and events (see section

16 .B FILE FORMAT

17 for details). It produces a list of events which are coming up within the next few weeks.

18

19 .SH OPTIONS

20

21 .TP

22 .BI -f\ file

23 Read the events from

24 .I file

25 rather than

26 .IR ~/.birthdays.

27 If

28 .I file

29 is a single hyphen, read the events from the standard input (usually

30 the terminal).

31

32 .TP

33 .BI -W\ warn

34 Warn

35 .I warn

36 days in advance, for entries that have no

37 .B w

38 flag (see

39 .BR FILE\ FORMAT ).

40 If this switch is not specified, it defaults to 21 days.

41

42

43 .SH FILE FORMAT

44

45 Each line beginning with a hash sign,

46 .RB ` # ',

47 is a comment and will be ignored.

48

49 Any other line specifies the name of a person or event, followed by an equals sign and

50 a date and finally some extra options. The date has to be in ISO 8601 date format (YYYY-MM-DD).

51 The extra options are:

52 .TP

53 .B bd

54 This line is a birthday (the default). The year, if given, should be when the person was born. A line designated as a

55 birthday will produce output like

56 .B Erin has a birthday in 3 days' time

57 or

58 .BR "Jemima is 3 in 2 weeks' time" .

59 .TP

60 .B ann

61 This line is an anniversary. The year, if given, should be the year in which the thing happened, producing output like

62 .B Pen exploded 3 years ago tomorrow

63 given a line such as

64 .BR "Pen exploded=1993-09-12 ann" .

65 .TP

66 .B ev

67 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

68 be displayed every year. The remaining time is simply appended to the text; for instance, the input

69 .B Easter=1996-04-07 ev

70 would give rise to the text

71 .BR "Easter in 1 week's time" .

72 .TP

73 .BI w n

74 Warn

75 .I n

76 days in advance of the date, rather than the default of 21 days or the number given with the

77 .B -W

78 flag.

79 .TP

80 .BI for days

81 The event lasts for

82 .B days

83 days.

84 .TP

85 .BI to date

86 The event lasts until

87 .IR date ,

88 which should be in the same format as for the date of the event.

89

90 .SH DATE SPECIFICATION

91

92 This version of of the programm is patched to only handle standard ISO 8601 date format now.

93 The intention to do change this behavior was to eliminate all those problems with different date formats.

94 IMHO we have standards to use them. Backward compatibility is not that important here, in my eyes.

95

96 .SH EXAMPLE

97

98 Joe Blow=1974-04-25

99

100 .SH FILES

101

102 .TP

103 .I ~/.birthdays

104 Your default birthdays file.

105

106 .SH SEE ALSO

107

108 .BR birthday (1),

109 cal (1)

110

111 .SH BUGS

112 The program cannot warn more than one year in advance of anything.

113

114 .SH CREDITS

115

116 This Program is heavily based on birthday. But without all non essential stuff. Nevertheless, much thanks for birthday, Andy!

117

118 .SH AUTHOR

119 Andy Mortimer <andy.mortimer@zetnet.co.uk> and markus schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de>