[TUHS] History of cal(1)?

John Levine via TUHS tuhs at tuhs.org
Tue Sep 23 10:34:53 AEST 2025


It appears that Douglas McIlroy via TUHS <douglas.mcilroy at dartmouth.edu> said:
>> [cal(1)] has all the logic to adjust for 16th century
>> calendar changes ...  (Try "cal 9 1752")
>> My impression is that [it is] overimplemented.
>
>The fact that a 16th century change is illustrated by an 18th century
>example suggests that not quite "all the logic" is there. It's good
>for Great Britain and its colonies, but not elsewhere. So I'd say it's
>underimplemented :)

You'll be relieved to know that ncal has addressed that omission:

$ ncal -p
 AL Albania        1912-11-30      IS Iceland        1700-11-16
 AT Austria        1583-10-05      IT Italy          1582-10-04
 AU Australia      1752-09-02      JP Japan          1918-12-18
 BE Belgium        1582-12-14      LT Lithuania      1918-02-01
 BG Bulgaria       1916-03-31      LU Luxembourg     1582-12-14
 CA Canada         1752-09-02      LV Latvia         1918-02-01
 CH Switzerland    1655-02-28      NL Netherlands    1582-12-14
 CN China          1911-12-18      NO Norway         1700-02-18
 CZ Czech Republic 1584-01-06      PL Poland         1582-10-04
 DE Germany        1700-02-18      PT Portugal       1582-10-04
 DK Denmark        1700-02-18      RO Romania        1919-03-31
 ES Spain          1582-10-04      RU Russia         1918-01-31
 FI Finland        1753-02-17      SI Slovenia       1919-03-04
 FR France         1582-12-09      SE Sweden         1753-02-17
 GB United Kingdom 1752-09-02      TR Turkey         1926-12-18
 GR Greece         1924-03-09     *US United States  1752-09-02
 HU Hungary        1587-10-21      YU Yugoslavia     1919-03-04

R's,
John

PS: my point was not that it's a lot of code, but that is's a distinctive hack so one might
look at earlier calendar programs to see whether they also did it to try and trace the
chain of influence.


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