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ZSHCALSYS(1)                           General Commands Manual                          ZSHCALSYS(1)



NAME
       zshcalsys - zsh calendar system

DESCRIPTION
       The  shell is supplied with a series of functions to replace and enhance the traditional Unix
       calendar programme, which warns the user of imminent or future events, details of  which  are
       stored  in  a  text file (typically calendar in the user's home directory).  The version pro‐
       vided here includes a mechanism for alerting the user when an event is due.

       In addition functions age, before and after are provided that can be used in  a  glob  quali‐
       fier; they allow files to be selected based on their modification times.

       The  format  of the calendar file and the dates used there in and in the age function are de‐
       scribed first, then the functions that can be called to examine and modify the calendar file.

       The functions here depend on the availability of the zsh/datetime module which is usually in‐
       stalled  with the shell.  The library function strptime() must be available; it is present on
       most recent operating systems.

FILE AND DATE FORMATS
   Calendar File Format
       The calendar file is by default ~/calendar.  This can  be  configured  by  the  calendar-file
       style,  see  the  section  STYLES  below.   The basic format consists of a series of separate
       lines, with no indentation, each including a date and time specification followed  by  a  de‐
       scription of the event.

       Various  enhancements  to  this  format  are supported, based on the syntax of Emacs calendar
       mode.  An indented line indicates a continuation line that continues the description  of  the
       event  from  the preceding line (note the date may not be continued in this way).  An initial
       ampersand (&) is ignored for compatibility.

       An indented line on which the first non-whitespace character is # is not displayed  with  the
       calendar  entry,  but is still scanned for information.  This can be used to hide information
       useful to the calendar system but not to the user, such as the unique identifier used by cal‐‐
       endar_add.

       The  Emacs  extension  that  a  date  with no description may refer to a number of succeeding
       events at different times is not supported.

       Unless the done-file style has been altered, any events which have  been  processed  are  ap‐
       pended  to  the  file  with  the  same name as the calendar file with the suffix .done, hence
       ~/calendar.done by default.

       An example is shown below.

   Date Format
       The format of the date and time is designed to allow flexibility without admitting ambiguity.
       (The  words `date' and `time' are both used in the documentation below; except where specifi‐
       cally noted this implies a string that may include both a date  and  a  time  specification.)
       Note  that there is no localization support; month and day names must be in English and sepa‐
       rator characters are fixed.  Matching is case insensitive, and only the first  three  letters
       of  the  names  are significant, although as a special case a form beginning "month" does not
       match "Monday".  Furthermore, time zones are not handled; all times are assumed to be local.

       It is recommended that, rather than exploring the intricacies of the  system,  users  find  a
       date  format  that  is  natural to them and stick to it.  This will avoid unexpected effects.
       Various key facts should be noted.

       •      In particular, note the confusion between month/day/year and day/month/year  when  the
              month  is  numeric; these formats should be avoided if at all possible.  Many alterna‐
              tives are available.

       •      The year must be given in full to avoid confusion, and only years from  1900  to  2099
              inclusive are matched.

       The  following give some obvious examples; users finding here a format they like and not sub‐
       ject to vagaries of style may skip the full description.  As dates and times are matched sep‐
       arately (even though the time may be embedded in the date), any date format may be mixed with
       any format for the time of day provide the separators are clear (whitespace, colons, commas).

              2007/04/03 13:13
              2007/04/03:13:13
              2007/04/03 1:13 pm
              3rd April 2007, 13:13
              April 3rd 2007 1:13 p.m.
              Apr 3, 2007 13:13
              Tue Apr 03 13:13:00 2007
              13:13 2007/apr/3

       More detailed rules follow.

       Times are parsed and extracted before dates.  They must use colons to separate hours and min‐
       utes,  though  a dot is allowed before seconds if they are present.  This limits time formats
       to the following:

       •      HH:MM[:SS[.FFFFF]] [am|pm|a.m.|p.m.]

       •      HH:MM.SS[.FFFFF] [am|pm|a.m.|p.m.]

       Here, square brackets indicate optional elements, possibly with alternatives.  Fractions of a
       second are recognised but ignored.  For absolute times (the normal format require by the cal‐‐
       endar file and the age, before and after functions) a date is mandatory but a time of day  is
       not;  the  time  returned  is at the start of the date.  One variation is allowed: if a.m. or
       p.m. or one of their variants is present, an hour without a minute is allowed, e.g. 3 p.m..

       Time zones are not handled, though if one is matched following a time specification  it  will
       be  removed to allow a surrounding date to be parsed.  This only happens if the format of the
       timezone is not too unusual.  The following are examples of forms that are understood:

              +0100
              GMT
              GMT-7
              CET+1CDT

       Any part of the timezone that is not numeric must have exactly three capital letters  in  the
       name.

       Dates  suffer  from  the ambiguity between DD/MM/YYYY and MM/DD/YYYY.  It is recommended this
       form is avoided with purely numeric dates, but use of ordinals, eg. 3rd/04/2007, will resolve
       the  ambiguity  as  the ordinal is always parsed as the day of the month.  Years must be four
       digits (and the first two must be 19 or 20); 03/04/08 is not recognised.  Other  numbers  may
       have leading zeroes, but they are not required.  The following are handled:

       •      YYYY/MM/DDYYYY-MM-DDYYYY/MNM/DDYYYY-MNM-DDDD[th|st|rd] MNM[,] [ YYYY ]

       •      MNM DD[th|st|rd][,] [ YYYY ]

       •      DD[th|st|rd]/MM[,] YYYYDD[th|st|rd]/MM/YYYYMM/DD[th|st|rd][,] YYYYMM/DD[th|st|rd]/YYYY

       Here,  MNM  is  at least the first three letters of a month name, matched case-insensitively.
       The remainder of the month name may appear but its contents  are  irrelevant,  so  janissary,
       febrile, martial, apricot, maybe, junta, etc. are happily handled.

       Where  the  year  is shown as optional, the current year is assumed.  There are only two such
       cases, the form Jun 20 or 14 September (the only two commonly occurring forms, apart  from  a
       "the"  in some forms of English, which isn't currently supported).  Such dates will of course
       become ambiguous in the future, so should ideally be avoided.

       Times may follow dates with a colon, e.g. 1965/07/12:09:45; this is in  order  to  provide  a
       format with no whitespace.  A comma and whitespace are allowed, e.g. 1965/07/12, 09:45.  Cur‐
       rently the order of these separators is not checked, so illogical formats such as 1965/07/12,
       :  ,09:45  will  also  be  matched.  For simplicity such variations are not shown in the list
       above.  Otherwise, a time is only recognised as being associated with a date if there is only
       whitespace in between, or if the time was embedded in the date.

       Days  of the week are not normally scanned, but will be ignored if they occur at the start of
       the date pattern only.  However, in contexts where it is useful to specify dates relative  to
       today, days of the week with no other date specification may be given.  The day is assumed to
       be either today or within the past week.  Likewise, the words yesterday, today  and  tomorrow
       are  handled.   All  matches  are case-insensitive.  Hence if today is Monday, then Sunday is
       equivalent to yesterday, Monday is equivalent to today, but Tuesday gives  a  date  six  days
       ago.   This  is  not  generally useful within the calendar file.  Dates in this format may be
       combined with a time specification; for example Tomorrow, 8 p.m..

       For example, the standard date format:

              Fri Aug 18 17:00:48 BST 2006

       is handled by matching HH:MM:SS and removing it together with the matched (but  unused)  time
       zone.  This leaves the following:

              Fri Aug 18 2006

       Fri is ignored and the rest is matched according to the standard rules.

   Relative Time Format
       In  certain places relative times are handled.  Here, a date is not allowed; instead a combi‐
       nation of various supported periods are allowed, together with an optional time.  The periods
       must be in order from most to least significant.

       In some cases, a more accurate calculation is possible when there is an anchor date:  offsets
       of months or years pick the correct day, rather than being rounded, and  it  is  possible  to
       pick a particular day in a month as `(1st Friday)', etc., as described in more detail below.

       Anchors are available in the following cases.  If one or two times are passed to the function
       calendar, the start time acts an anchor for the end time when the end time is relative  (even
       if the start time is implicit).  When examining calendar files, the scheduled event being ex‐
       amined anchors the warning time when it is given explicitly by means  of  the  WARN  keyword;
       likewise,  the  scheduled event anchors a repetition period when given by the RPT keyword, so
       that specifications such as RPT 2 months, 3rd Thursday are handled properly.  Finally, the -R
       argument to calendar_scandate directly provides an anchor for relative calculations.

       The periods handled, with possible abbreviations are:

       Years  years, yrs, ys, year, yr, y, yearly.  A year is 365.25 days unless there is an anchor.

       Months months,  mons,  mnths, mths, month, mon, mnth, mth, monthly.  Note that m, ms, mn, mns
              are ambiguous and are not handled.  A month is a period of 30 days rather than a  cal‐
              endar month unless there is an anchor.

       Weeks  weeks, wks, ws, week, wk, w, weekly

       Days   days, dys, ds, day, dy, d, daily

       Hours  hours, hrs, hs, hour, hr, h, hourly

       Minutes
              minutes, mins, minute, min, but not m, ms, mn or mns

       Seconds
              seconds, secs, ss, second, sec, s

       Spaces between the numbers are optional, but are required between items, although a comma may
       be used (with or without spaces).

       The forms yearly to hourly allow the number to be omitted; it is assumed to be 1.  For  exam‐
       ple,  1 d and daily are equivalent.  Note that using those forms with plurals is confusing; 2
       yearly is the same as 2 years, not twice yearly, so it is recommended they only be used with‐
       out numbers.

       When an anchor time is present, there is an extension to handle regular events in the form of
       the nth someday of the month.  Such a specification must occur immediately after any year and
       month specification, but before any time of day, and must be in the form n(th|st|rd) day, for
       example 1st Tuesday or 3rd Monday.  As in other places, days are matched case  insensitively,
       must  be  in English, and only the first three letters are significant except that a form be‐
       ginning `month' does not match `Monday'.  No attempt is made to sanitize the resulting  date;
       attempts  to  squeeze too many occurrences into a month will push the day into the next month
       (but in the obvious fashion, retaining the correct day of the week).

       Here are some examples:

              30 years 3 months 4 days 3:42:41
              14 days 5 hours
              Monthly, 3rd Thursday
              4d,10hr

   Example
       Here is an example calendar file.  It uses a consistent date format, as recommended above.

              Feb 1, 2006 14:30 Pointless bureaucratic meeting
              Mar 27, 2006 11:00 Mutual recrimination and finger pointing
                Bring water pistol and waterproofs
              Mar 31, 2006 14:00 Very serious managerial pontification
                # UID 12C7878A9A50
              Apr 10, 2006 13:30 Even more pointless blame assignment exercise WARN 30 mins
              May 18, 2006 16:00 Regular moaning session RPT monthly, 3rd Thursday

       The second entry has a continuation line.  The third entry has a continuation line that  will
       not  be shown when the entry is displayed, but the unique identifier will be used by the cal‐‐
       endar_add function when updating the event.  The fourth entry will produce a warning 30  min‐
       utes  before  the  event (to allow you to equip yourself appropriately).  The fifth entry re‐
       peats after a month on the 3rd Thursday, i.e. June 15, 2006, at the same time.

USER FUNCTIONS
       This section describes functions that are designed to be called directly by  the  user.   The
       first part describes those functions associated with the user's calendar; the second part de‐
       scribes the use in glob qualifiers.

   Calendar system functions
       calendar [ -abdDsv ] [ -C calfile ] [ -n num ] [ -S showprog ]
                [ [ start ] end ]
       calendar -r [ -abdDrsv ] [ -C calfile ] [ -n num ] [ -S showprog ]
                [ start ]
              Show events in the calendar.

              With no arguments, show events from the start of today until the end of the next work‐
              ing day after today.  In other words, if today is Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, show up
              to the end of the following Monday, otherwise show today and tomorrow.

              If end is given, show events from the start of today up to the time  and  date  given,
              which is in the format described in the previous section.  Note that if this is a date
              the time is assumed to be midnight at the start of the date, so that effectively  this
              shows all events before the given date.

              end may start with a +, in which case the remainder of the specification is a relative
              time format as described in the previous section indicating the range of time from the
              start time that is to be included.

              If  start  is  also given, show events starting from that time and date.  The word now
              can be used to indicate the current time.

              To implement an alert when events are due, include calendar -s in your ~/.zshrc file.

              Options:

              -a     Show all items in the calendar, regardless of the start and end.

              -b     Brief:  don't display continuation lines (i.e.  indented  lines  following  the
                     line with the date/time), just the first line.

              -B lines
                     Brief:  display at most the first lines lines of the calendar entry.  `-B 1' is
                     equivalent to `-b'.

              -C calfile
                     Explicitly specify a calendar file instead of the value  of  the  calendar-file
                     style or the default ~/calendar.

              -d     Move  any events that have passed from the calendar file to the "done" file, as
                     given by the done-file style or the default which is  the  calendar  file  with
                     .done appended.  This option is implied by the -s option.

              -D     Turns off the option -d, even if the -s option is also present.

              -n num, -num
                     Show  at  least  num events, if present in the calendar file, regardless of the
                     start and end.

              -r     Show all the remaining options in the calendar, ignoring the  given  end  time.
                     The start time is respected; any argument given is treated as a start time.

              -s     Use the shell's sched command to schedule a timed event that will warn the user
                     when an event is due.  Note that the sched command only runs if the shell is at
                     an interactive prompt; a foreground task blocks the scheduled task from running
                     until it is finished.

                     The timed event usually runs the programme calendar_show to show the event,  as
                     described in the section UTILITY FUNCTIONS below.

                     By default, a warning of the event is shown five minutes before it is due.  The
                     warning period can be configured by the style warn-time or for a single  calen‐
                     dar  entry by including WARN reltime in the first line of the entry, where reltime is one of the usual relative time formats.

                     A repeated event may be indicated by including RPT reldate in the first line of
                     the  entry.  After the scheduled event has been displayed it will be re-entered
                     into the calendar file at a time reldate after the existing event.   Note  that
                     this is currently the only use made of the repeat count, so that it is not pos‐
                     sible to query the schedule for a recurrence of an event in the calendar  until
                     the previous event has passed.

                     If  RPT  is used, it is also possible to specify that certain recurrences of an
                     event are rescheduled or cancelled.  This is done with the OCCURRENCE  keyword,
                     followed  by  whitespace and the date and time of the occurrence in the regular
                     sequence, followed by whitespace and either the date and time of  the  resched‐
                     uled  event or the exact string CANCELLED.  In this case the date and time must
                     be in exactly the "date with local time" format used by the text/calendar  MIME
                     type  (RFC 2445), <YYYY><MM><DD>T<hh><mm><ss> (note the presence of the literal
                     character T).  The first word (the regular recurrence) may be  something  other
                     than  a proper date/time to indicate that the event is additional to the normal
                     sequence;  a   convention   that   retains   the   formatting   appearance   is
                     XXXXXXXXTXXXXXX.

                     Furthermore,  it  is  useful to record the next regular recurrence (as then the
                     displayed date may be for a rescheduled event so cannot be used for calculating
                     the  regular  sequence).  This is specified by RECURRENCE and a time or date in
                     the same format.  calendar_add adds such an indication when it encounters a re‐
                     curring event that does not include one, based on the headline date/time.

                     If  calendar_add  is used to update occurrences the UID keyword described there
                     should be present in both the existing entry and the added occurrence in  order
                     to identify recurring event sequences.

                     For example,

                            Thu May 6, 2010 11:00 Informal chat RPT 1 week
                              # RECURRENCE 20100506T110000
                              # OCCURRENCE 20100513T110000 20100513T120000
                              # OCCURRENCE 20100520T110000 CANCELLED

                     The  event  that occurs at 11:00 on 13th May 2010 is rescheduled an hour later.
                     The event that occurs a week later is cancelled.  The occurrences are given  on
                     a  continuation  line  starting  with a # character so will not usually be dis‐
                     played as part of the event.  As elsewhere, no account of time zones  is  taken
                     with the times. After the next event occurs the headline date/time will be `Thu
                     May 13, 2010 12:00' while the RECURRENCE date/time  will  be  `20100513T110000'
                     (note  that  cancelled  and moved events are not taken account of in the RECUR‐‐
                     RENCE, which records what the next regular recurrence  is,  but  they  are  ac‐
                     counted for in the headline date/time).

                     It  is safe to run calendar -s to reschedule an existing event (if the calendar
                     file has changed, for example), and also to have it running  in  multiples  in‐
                     stances of the shell since the calendar file is locked when in use.

                     By  default,  expired  events  are moved to the "done" file; see the -d option.
                     Use -D to prevent this.

              -S showprog
                     Explicitly specify a programme to be used for showing  events  instead  of  the
                     value of the show-prog style or the default calendar_show.

              -v     Verbose:  show more information about stages of processing.  This is useful for
                     confirming that the function has successfully parsed the dates in the  calendar
                     file.

       calendar_add [ -BL ] event ...
              Adds  a  single event to the calendar in the appropriate location.  The event can con‐
              tain multiple lines, as described in the section Calendar File  Format  above.   Using
              this  function  ensures  that  the calendar file is sorted in date and time order.  It
              also makes special arrangements for locking the file while it  is  altered.   The  old
              calendar is left in a file with the suffix .old.

              The  option  -B  indicates  that  backing  up the calendar file will be handled by the
              caller and should not be performed by calendar_add.  The option -L indicates that cal‐‐
              endar_add  does not need to lock the calendar file as it is already locked.  These op‐
              tions will not usually be needed by users.

              If the style reformat-date is true, the date and time of the new entry will be rewrit‐
              ten  into  the standard date format:  see the descriptions of this style and the style
              date-format.

              The function can use a unique identifier stored with each event to ensure that updates
              to existing events are treated correctly.  The entry should contain the word UID, fol‐
              lowed by whitespace, followed by a word consisting entirely of hexadecimal  digits  of
              arbitrary  length  (all digits are significant, including leading zeroes).  As the UID
              is not directly useful to the user, it is convenient to hide it on an indented contin‐
              uation line starting with a #, for example:

                     Aug 31, 2007 09:30  Celebrate the end of the holidays
                       # UID 045B78A0

              The second line will not be shown by the calendar function.

              It  is possible to specify the RPT keyword followed by CANCELLED instead of a relative
              time.  This causes any matched event or series of events to be cancelled (the original
              event  does  not  have  to  be  marked  as  recurring in order to be cancelled by this
              method).  A UID is required in order to match an existing event in the calendar.

              calendar_add will attempt to manage recurrences and occurrences of repeating events as
              described for event scheduling by calendar -s above.  To reschedule or cancel a single
              event calendar_add should be called with an entry that includes the  correct  UID  but
              does  not  include the RPT keyword as this is taken to mean the entry applies to a se‐
              ries of repeating events and hence replaces all existing information.   Each  resched‐
              uled  or  cancelled  occurrence must have an OCCURRENCE keyword in the entry passed to
              calendar_add which will be merged into the calendar file.  Any existing  reference  to
              the  occurrence  is  replaced.   An occurrence that does not refer to a valid existing
              event is added as a one-off occurrence to the same calendar entry.

       calendar_edit
              This calls the user's editor to edit the calendar file.  If there are arguments,  they
              are taken as the editor to use (the file name is appended to the commands); otherwise,
              the editor is given by the variable VISUAL, if set, else the variable EDITOR.

              If the calendar scheduler was running, then after editing  the  file  calendar  -s  is
              called to update it.

              This  function locks out the calendar system during the edit.  Hence it should be used
              to edit the calendar file if there is any possibility of a  calendar  event  occurring
              meanwhile.   Note this can lead to another shell with calendar functions enabled hang‐
              ing waiting for a lock, so it is necessary to quit the editor as soon as possible.

       calendar_parse calendar-entry
              This is the internal function that analyses the parts of a calendar  entry,  which  is
              passed  as the only argument.  The function returns status 1 if the argument could not
              be parsed as a calendar entry and status 2 if  the  wrong  number  of  arguments  were
              passed; it also sets the parameter reply to an empty associative array.  Otherwise, it
              returns status 0 and sets elements of the associative array reply as follows:

              time   The time as a string of digits in the same units as $EPOCHSECONDS
              schedtime
                     The regularly scheduled time.  This may differ from the actual event time  time
                     if  this  is  a  recurring  event and the next occurrence has been rescheduled.
                     Then time gives the actual time and schedtime the time of  the  regular  recur‐
                     rence before modification.
              text1  The  text  from  the line not including the date and time of the event, but in‐
                     cluding any WARN or RPT keywords and values.
              warntime
                     Any warning time given by the WARN keyword as a string of digits containing the
                     time at which to warn in the same units as $EPOCHSECONDS.  (Note this is an ab‐
                     solute time, not the relative time passed down.)  Not set no WARN  keyword  and
                     value were matched.
              warnstr
                     The raw string matched after the WARN keyword, else unset.
              rpttime
                     Any  recurrence  time given by the RPT keyword as a string of digits containing
                     the time of the recurrence in the same units as $EPOCHSECONDS.  (Note  this  is
                     an absolute time.)  Not set if no RPT keyword and value were matched.
              schedrpttime
                     The  next  regularly scheduled occurrence of a recurring event before modifica‐
                     tion.  This may differ from rpttime, which is the actual time of the event that
                     may have been rescheduled from the regular time.
              rptstr The raw string matched after the RPT keyword, else unset.
              text2  The text from the line after removal of the date and any keywords and values.

       calendar_showdate [ -r ] [ -f fmt ] date-spec ...
              The  given  date-spec  is interpreted and the corresponding date and time printed.  If
              the initial date-spec begins with a + or - it is treated as relative  to  the  current
              time; date-specs after the first are treated as relative to the date calculated so far
              and a leading + is optional in that case.  This allows one to use the system as a date
              calculator.   For  example, calendar_showdate '+1 month, 1st Friday' shows the date of
              the first Friday of next month.

              With the option -r nothing is printed but the value of the date and  time  in  seconds
              since the epoch is stored in the parameter REPLY.

              With  the  option  -f fmt the given date/time conversion format is passed to strftime;
              see notes on the date-format style below.

              In order to avoid ambiguity with negative relative date specifications,  options  must
              occur  in separate words; in other words, -r and -f should not be combined in the same
              word.

       calendar_sort
              Sorts the calendar file into date and time order.    The old calendar  is  left  in  a
              file with the suffix .old.

   Glob qualifiers
       age    The  function  age  can be autoloaded and use separately from the calendar system, al‐
              though it uses the function calendar_scandate for date formatting.   It  requires  the
              zsh/stat builtin, but uses only the builtin zstat.

              age  selects  files having a given modification time for use as a glob qualifier.  The
              format of the date is the same as that understood by the calendar system, described in
              the section FILE AND DATE FORMATS above.

              The  function  can take one or two arguments, which can be supplied either directly as
              command or arguments, or separately as shell parameters.

                     print *(e:age 2006/10/04 2006/10/09:)

              The example above matches all files modified between the start of  those  dates.   The
              second argument may alternatively be a relative time introduced by a +:

                     print *(e:age 2006/10/04 +5d:)

              The example above is equivalent to the previous example.

              In addition to the special use of days of the week, today and yesterday, times with no
              date may be specified; these apply to today.  Obviously such uses  become  problematic
              around midnight.

                     print *(e-age 12:00 13:30-)

              The example above shows files modified between 12:00 and 13:00 today.

                     print *(e:age 2006/10/04:)

              The  example above matches all files modified on that date.  If the second argument is
              omitted it is taken to be exactly 24 hours after the first argument (even if the first
              argument contains a time).

                     print *(e-age 2006/10/04:10:15 2006/10/04:10:45-)

              The example above supplies times.  Note that whitespace within the time and date spec‐
              ification must be quoted to ensure age receives the correct arguments, hence  the  use
              of the additional colon to separate the date and time.

                     AGEREF=2006/10/04:10:15
                     AGEREF2=2006/10/04:10:45
                     print *(+age)

              This  shows the same example before using another form of argument passing.  The dates
              and times in the parameters AGEREF and AGEREF2 stay in effect until unset, but will be
              overridden if any argument is passed as an explicit argument to age.  Any explicit ar‐
              gument causes both parameters to be ignored.

              Instead of an explicit date and time, it's possible to use the modification time of  a
              file  as  the  date  and  time for either argument by introducing the file name with a
              colon:

                     print *(e-age :file1-)

              matches all files created on the same day (24 hours starting from midnight) as file1.

                     print *(e-age :file1 :file2-)

              matches all files modified no earlier than file1 and no later  than  file2;  precision
              here is to the nearest second.

       after
       before The  functions  after  and before are simpler versions of age that take just one argu‐
              ment.  The argument is parsed similarly to an argument of age; if it is not given  the
              variable  AGEREF  is consulted.  As the names of the functions suggest, a file matches
              if its modification time is after or before the time and date specified.   If  a  time
              only is given the date is today.

              The two following examples are therefore equivalent:
                     print *(e-after 12:00-)
                     print *(e-after today:12:00-)

STYLES
       The  zsh  style mechanism using the zstyle command is describe in zshmodules(1).  This is the
       same mechanism used in the completion system.

       The styles below are all examined in the  context  :datetime:function:,  for  example  :date‐‐
       time:calendar:.

       calendar-file
              The location of the main calendar.  The default is ~/calendar.

       date-format
              A  strftime  format string (see strftime(3)) with the zsh extensions providing various
              numbers with no leading zero or space if the number is a single digit as described for
              the  %D{string}  prompt  format  in  the section EXPANSION OF PROMPT SEQUENCES in zshmisc(1).

              This is used for outputting dates in calendar, both to support the -v option and  when
              adding recurring events back to the calendar file, and in calendar_showdate as the fi‐
              nal output format.

              If the style is not set, the default used is similar the  standard  system  format  as
              output by the date command (also known as `ctime format'): `%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Z %Y'.

       done-file
              The  location of the file to which events which have passed are appended.  The default
              is the calendar file location with the suffix .done.  The style may be set to an empty
              string in which case a "done" file will not be maintained.

       reformat-date
              Boolean,  used by calendar_add.  If it is true, the date and time of new entries added
              to the calendar will be reformatted to the format given by the  style  date-format  or
              its  default.   Only  the  date  and time of the event itself is reformatted; any sub‐
              sidiary dates and times such as those associated with repeat  and  warning  times  are
              left alone.

       show-prog
              The  programme  run  by calendar for showing events.  It will be passed the start time
              and stop time of the events requested in seconds since the epoch followed by the event
              text.   Note  that calendar -s uses a start time and stop time equal to one another to
              indicate alerts for specific events.

              The default is the function calendar_show.

       warn-time
              The time before an event at which a warning will be displayed, if the  first  line  of
              the event does not include the text EVENT reltime.  The default is 5 minutes.

UTILITY FUNCTIONS
       calendar_lockfiles
              Attempt  to  lock  the  files given in the argument.  To prevent problems with network
              file locking this is done in an ad hoc fashion by attempting to create a symbolic link
              to the file with the name file.lockfile.  No other system level functions are used for
              locking, i.e. the file can be accessed and modified by any utility that does  not  use
              this  mechanism.   In  particular, the user is not prevented from editing the calendar
              file at the same time unless calendar_edit is used.

              Three attempts are made to lock the file before giving up.  If the module  zsh/zselect
              is available, the times of the attempts are jittered so that multiple instances of the
              calling function are unlikely to retry at the same time.

              The files locked are appended to the array lockfiles, which should  be  local  to  the
              caller.

              If all files were successfully locked, status zero is returned, else status one.

              This  function may be used as a general file locking function, although this will only
              work if only this mechanism is used to lock files.

       calendar_read
              This is a backend used by various other functions to parse the calendar file, which is
              passed  as the only argument.  The array calendar_entries is set to the list of events
              in the file; no pruning is done except that ampersands are removed from the  start  of
              the line.  Each entry may contain multiple lines.

       calendar_scandate
              This  is  a generic function to parse dates and times that may be used separately from
              the calendar system.  The argument is a date or time specification as described in the
              section FILE AND DATE FORMATS above.  The parameter REPLY is set to the number of sec‐
              onds since the epoch corresponding to that date or time.  By  default,  the  date  and
              time may occur anywhere within the given argument.

              Returns status zero if the date and time were successfully parsed, else one.

              Options:
              -a     The  date  and time are anchored to the start of the argument; they will not be
                     matched if there is preceding text.

              -A     The date and time are anchored to both the start and end of the argument;  they
                     will not be matched if the is any other text in the argument.

              -d     Enable additional debugging output.

              -m     Minus.  When -R anchor_time is also given the relative time is calculated back‐
                     wards from anchor_time.

              -r     The argument passed is to be parsed as a relative time.

              -R anchor_time
                     The argument passed is to be parsed as a relative time.  The time  is  relative
                     to  anchor_time,  a  time in seconds since the epoch, and the returned value is
                     the absolute time corresponding to advancing anchor_time by the  relative  time
                     given.   This  allows lengths of months to be correctly taken into account.  If
                     the final day does not exist in the given month, the  last  day  of  the  final
                     month  is  given.   For example, if the anchor time is during 31st January 2007
                     and the relative time is 1 month, the final time is the same time of day during
                     28th February 2007.

              -s     In addition to setting REPLY, set REPLY2 to the remainder of the argument after
                     the date and time have been stripped.  This is  empty  if  the  option  -A  was
                     given.

              -t     Allow a time with no date specification.  The date is assumed to be today.  The
                     behaviour is unspecified if the iron tongue of midnight is tolling twelve.

       calendar_show
              The function used by default to display events.  It accepts a start time and end  time
              for events, both in epoch seconds, and an event description.

              The  event is always printed to standard output.  If the command line editor is active
              (which will usually be the case) the command line will be redisplayed after  the  out‐
              put.

              If the parameter DISPLAY is set and the start and end times are the same (indicating a
              scheduled event), the function uses the command xmessage to display a window with  the
              event details.

BUGS
       As  the system is based entirely on shell functions (with a little support from the zsh/date‐‐
       time module) the mechanisms used are not as robust as those provided by a dedicated  calendar
       utility.  Consequently the user should not rely on the shell for vital alerts.

       There is no calendar_delete function.

       There  is  no  localization  support for dates and times, nor any support for the use of time
       zones.

       Relative periods of months and years do not take into account the variable number of days.

       The calendar_show function is currently hardwired to use xmessage for displaying alerts on  X
       Window  System  displays.   This should be configurable and ideally integrate better with the
       desktop.

       calendar_lockfiles hangs the shell while waiting for a lock on a  file.   If  called  from  a
       scheduled task, it should instead reschedule the event that caused it.



zsh 5.8.1                                 February 12, 2022                             ZSHCALSYS(1)
zshcalsys(1)
NAME DESCRIPTION FILE AND DATE FORMATS
Calendar File Format Date Format Relative Time Format Example
USER FUNCTIONS
Calendar system functions Glob qualifiers after
STYLES
calendar-file date-format done-file reformat-date show-prog warn-time
UTILITY FUNCTIONS BUGS

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