On Unix-like operating systems, the cal and ncal commands display a formatted calendar in the terminal.

Description

By default, the calendar displayed by cal looks like this:

  • Description

  • Syntax

  • Options

  • Examples

  • Related commands

  • Linux commands help

    April 2019
    Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
    1 2 3 4 5 6
    7 8 9 10 11 12 13
    14 15 16 17 18 19 20
    21 22 23 24 25 26 27
    28 29 30

The ncal (“new cal”) command provides the same functions of cal, but it can display the calendar vertically (with weeks in columns). On systems with ncal installed, cal is often a symbolic link to ncal. It behaves like the original cal if you use the name cal to run the program.

If no options are specified, cal and ncal display the current month, with the current day highlighted.

Syntax

cal [month] [year] [-m month] [-y year] [-h] [-3] [-1] [-A num] [-B num] [-d YYYY-MM] [-j] [-N]

ncal [month] [year] [-m month] [-y year] [-h] [-3] [-1] [-A num] [-B num] [-d YYYY-MM] [-J] [-C] [-e] [-o] [-p] [-w] [-M] [-S] [-b]

Options

The following options are available in both cal and ncal:

Options: cal

The following options are available only in cal:

Options: ncal

The following options are available only in ncal:

Examples

cal

Display the calendar for this month, with today highlighted.

cal -h

Same as the previous command, but do not highlight today.

cal -3

Display last month, this month, and next month.

cal -y

Display this entire year’s calendar.

cal -y 2000

Display the entire year 2000 calendar.

cal 2000

Same as the previous command.

cal -m December

Display the calendar for December of this year.

cal -m Dec

cal -m 12

Same as the previous two commands.

cal 12

Same as the previous three commands.

cal 12 2000

Display the calendar for December 2000.

ncal

Display this month’s calendar, with weeks arranged vertically rather than horizontally.

ncal -y

Use a vertical calendar representation, displaying the entire year.

calendar — Display appointments and reminders.