cal

Terminal calendar — a Rust rewrite of the cal utility from util-linux.

Features

• Flexible display: single month, three months, year, arbitrary number of months
• Week start: Monday -m (ISO) or Sunday -s (US)
• Week numbers: -w with numbering system choice (--week-type iso or us)
• Julian days: -j shows day of year instead of date
• Vertical mode: -v for compact day-by-column layout
• Custom reform: --reform 1752|gregorian|iso|julian for different calendar systems
• Today highlight: inverse color for current day
• Weekend and holiday highlight: colors for Saturday, Sunday, and official holidays
• Plugins: dynamic loading of holiday highlighter plugins via API

Installation

cargo build --release

Binary will be in target/release/cal.

Building with plugins

The holiday highlighter plugin is built in the workspace:

cargo build --release --workspace

Plugin libholiday_highlighter.so will be in target/release/.

Commands

Basic usage

Command	Description
cal	Current month
cal 2026	Entire year 2026
cal 2 2026	February 2026
cal 15 9 2026	September 2026 with 15th highlighted
cal december 2025	December 2025 (month names supported)

Display modes

Command	Description
cal -y	Entire year (12 months)
cal -Y	Next 12 months from current
cal -3	Three months: previous, current, next
cal -n 6	Show 6 months
cal --span -n 12	12 months centered on current month

Output format

Command	Description
cal -v	Vertical mode (days in columns)
cal -j	Julian days (day of year 1-365/366)
cal -w	With week numbers
cal --week-type us	Weeks by US standard (starting Sunday)
cal -c 2	Force 2 columns for multi-month mode
cal -c auto	Auto-detect columns by terminal width

Calendar options

Command	Description
cal -m	Week starts Monday (ISO, default)
cal -s	Week starts Sunday (US style)
cal --reform 1752	1752 reform (skip Sep 3-13 in Great Britain)
cal --reform gregorian	Always Gregorian calendar
cal --reform julian	Always Julian calendar
cal --iso	ISO 8601 (alias for --reform iso)

Output and colors

Command	Description
cal --color	Disable colors (monochrome output)
cal -H	Holiday highlight via isdayoff.ru API (requires plugin)

Combined examples

# Year with week numbers and holidays
cal -y -w -H

# Three months vertically with holidays
cal -3 -v -H

# 6 months in 2 columns
cal -n 6 -c 2

# February 2026 with Julian days
cal -j 2 2026

# Next 12 months centered
cal --span -Y

Plugins

Holiday Highlighter

Plugin for highlighting official holidays via isdayoff.ru API.

Supported countries

Code	Country	Locales
RU	Russia	ru_RU, ru_BY, ru_KZ, ru_UZ, ru_LV
BY	Belarus	be_BY, ru_BY
KZ	Kazakhstan	kk_KZ, ru_KZ
US	USA	en_US, en
UZ	Uzbekistan	uz_UZ, ru_UZ
TR	Turkey	tr_TR
LV	Latvia	lv_LV, ru_LV

Country is auto-detected from LC_ALL, LC_TIME, or LANG.

Day types

Code	Meaning	Color
0	Working day	—
1	Weekend	Red
2	Shortened day	Teal
8	Public holiday	Red

Installing the plugin

After building the workspace, the plugin is in target/release/libholiday_highlighter.so.

For system installation:

# User-local
mkdir -p ~/.local/lib/cal/plugins
cp target/release/libholiday_highlighter.so ~/.local/lib/cal/plugins/

# System-wide (requires root)
sudo mkdir -p /usr/lib/cal/plugins
sudo cp target/release/libholiday_highlighter.so /usr/lib/cal/plugins/

API

The plugin uses isdayoff.ru API:

• GET /api/getdata?year=YYYY&month=MM&pre=1 — monthly data
• GET /api/getdata?year=YYYY&pre=1 — yearly data

Parameter pre=1 includes pre-holiday shortened days information.

Environment variables

Variable	Description
LC_ALL	Priority locale for month and day names
LC_TIME	Locale for date formatting
LANG	Fallback locale
CAL_TEST_TIME	Fixed date for testing (format YYYY-MM-DD)

Localization

Month names are supported in Russian and English:

cal январь 2026
cal February 2026
cal 1 2026

Weekdays are abbreviated to 2 characters according to locale:

• ru_RU: Пн, Вт, Ср, Чт, Пт, Сб, Вс
• en_US: Mo, Tu, We, Th, Fr, Sa, Su

Differences from util-linux cal

• Vertical mode support (-v)
• Dynamic plugins
• Automatic locale detection
• Flexible calendar reform configuration
• Color output with today/weekend/holiday highlights