In my Linux and UNIX classes I introduce the students to a nifty little CLI tool called cal. Run from the command line, it displays a calendar of the current month with today highlighted. If you have a *nix terminal handy, fire it up and let’s take this little baby for a test drive.
Run
cal and you get the calendar for the current month. To see the calendar for the entire year, run cal 2015.
You can also ask cal for a specific month and year. To find the date for Thanksgiving in the year 2020, run
cal 11 2020. Pass cal the month and year of your birth and you’ll see what day of the week was graced by that momentous occasion.
But do you want to see something cool? Run
cal 9 1752. You might notice something wrong here—September of 1752 is missing eleven days! Is cal broken? Hardly. In September of 1752 the British Empire (finally) adopted the Gregorian calendar to correct an error that was, by that time, eleven days long. What’s cool is that a little UNIX program already knew all that, so you don’t have to worry about accidentally scheduling a Tardis trip for London, September 8, 1752. That is, assuming the Tardis runs a version of UNIX…
So, there’s some trivia for the local pub. Perhaps you can use it to win a few drinks. And watch out for blue police call boxes.
Be seeing you.
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