[TUHS] When did "man cal" lose the comment about 1752?

Greg 'groggy' Lehey grog at lemis.com
Thu Jul 11 11:44:35 AEST 2024


On Thursday, 11 July 2024 at 11:24:26 +1000, Dave Horsfall wrote:
> The manpage for "cal" used to have the comment "Try September 1752" (and
> yes, I know why); it's no longer there, so when did it disappear?  The
> SysV fun police?
>
> I remember it in Ed5 and Ed6, but can't remember when I last saw it.

It's still mentioned in the latest version of FreeBSD:

     -s country_code
             Assume the switch from Julian to Gregorian Calendar at the date
             associated with the country_code.  If not specified, ncal tries
             to guess the switch date from the local environment or falls back
             to September 2, 1752.  This was when Great Britain and her
             colonies switched to the Gregorian Calendar.

It sounds like that's not the quote you're thinking of, though.  I've
checked back as far as FreeBSD 1.0, which had a much simpler version
of cal.  The man page states

       The  Gregorian  Reformation  is assumed to have occurred in 1752 on the
       3rd of September.  By this time, most countries had recognized the ref-
       ormation (although a few did not recognize it until the early  1900's.)
       Ten days following that date were eliminated by the reformation, so the
       calendar for that month is a bit unusual.

Maybe you can find something more interesting in the TUHS archives.

Greg
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