On 08-Oct-06 Ted Harding wrote:
On 08-Oct-06 Adam Bower wrote:
On Sun, Oct 08, 2006 at 06:29:24PM +0100, Ted Harding wrote:
I was prompted to investigate by catching someone referring to the Julian->Gregorian transition on the radio this morning.
I've known about 'cal' since 1984, and about its respect for the transition (documented in 'man cal').
Aaaah, that explains it then, you had me worried that someone could be a Unix user for over 20 years and not know about cal!
I have a vivid memory of when I first became aware of this. The man page for 'cal' on that 1984 version of Unix (By SoftQuad as I recall) mentioned it briefly, though I can't now directly recall the exact wording.
I've just shoved aside a pile of "archival material" (don't ask ... ) and delved into dust to retrieve printed manuals for SCO Xenix from 1988 which I've been hoarding. There, 'man cal' says (final para):
The calendar produced is that for England and her colonies. Note that England switched from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar in September of 1752, at which time eleven days were excised from the year. To see the result of this try "cal 9 1752".
What I do recall from 1984 is the words 'try "cal 9 1753"' though I'm not sure about the rest of the context, since I seem to recall that they were sort of dropped in for the reader to experience the consequences, without being prepared for it. But I could be wrong about that. Anyway, I did try it, and was delighted; and that's what I do recall.
Thanks to Adam's reference to W. Richard Stevens on the "ADSL" thread, WRS's web page led me to the original () source for the Unix man pages. Under 'cal' I find (stripped of formatiign commands):
prints a calendar for the specified year. If a month is also specified, a calendar just for that month is printed.
Year can be between 1 and 9999. The month is a number between 1 and 12. The calendar produced is that for England and her colonies.
Try September 1752.
and that, I'm now pretty sure, is exactly the laconic (and teasing) wording I encountered back in 1984!
In any case, this was one of the details that impressed me about Unix (in addition to the big things). Someone had taken considerable trouble to get details right, and to think of details to get right!
[...]
Cheers, Ted.
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