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birthday(1)		     General Commands Manual		     birthday(1)

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.

FILE FORMAT
     Each  line  beginning  with  a hash sign, `#', is a comment and will be ig-
     nored. 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 direc-
     tory.

     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  depre-
     cated), 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 pro-
	    duce 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
     (19xx), 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  be-
     fore 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>

								     birthday(1)
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