cal Command in RHEL 10: A Complete Guide with Examples

 cal Command in RHEL 10: A Complete Guide with Examples

cal command is used to view the calendar directly from the terminal. This is a very important command to verify dates quickly in RHEL 10 operating system without any graphical user interface and without any application.

With the help of cal command you can display the calendar of the current month, a particular month or the entire year in an easy-to-read format.

This topic applies to system administrators, developers, and end users working on RHEL 10 systems via terminal or SSH who need to view or create calendars.

Syntax of cal command:

cal [options] [[[day] month] year]

When you run cal command without any option it prints the calendar of the current month and highlights the current date on terminal

Practical Example of the “cal” Command in RHEL 10

Here I will show you some practical Example of the cal command.

Example1: Display Current Full Year Calendar with highlighted present date:

With the help of “option -y” you can display full year Calendar with highlighted present date, use the following command:   # cal -y

Example2: Display Specific Full Year Calendar:

If you want to display specific full year calendar, then type specific year number along with cal command

# cal 2026

 Example3: Display Specific Month of the year:

If you want to print specific month of the year, provide the numeric value [1 to 12] followed by year. Suppose I want to see the calendar of December 2019 then I will run below command:

# cal 12 2019

Example4: Display Previous, Current, and Next Month calendar:

With the help of “option -3” you can view past, present and future month altogether, use the following command: # cal -3

Example5: Start Week on Monday:

Using “option -m” we can display Monday as the first day of the week, use following command:          # cal -m

Example6: Start Week on Sunday:

Using “option -s” we can display Sunday as the first day of the week, use following command:             # cal -s

Example7: Show Week Numbers:

using “option -w” along with cal command we can display week number in the calendar, use the following command:  # cal -w

Want to display the week number in the calendar for the whole year using the following command: # cal -w 2025

 Example8: Display Julian Days in the Calendar:

When we want to print the days of the year we can use “option -j” with cal command to see the number of days in the year.  Use day-of-year numbering for all calendars. These are also called ordinal days. Ordinal days range from 1 to 366.

I am using “option -3” in the following command to demonstrate a clear understanding:                        # cal -j -3

Example9: Highlight Specific Date in calendar

If you want to highlight specific date in the calendar, use the following command:

# cal 2025-09-02

           Or

# cal 02 09 2025

Example10: Display the calendar in Vertical layout:

If you want to display the calendar in Vertical format, use the following command:

# cal -v

Example11: Display the calendar for the next twelve months:

Using “option -Y” we can display the calendar for the next twelve months with the help of cal command. Use the following command:

# cal -Y

Example12: Display the number of months:

With the help of “option -n” we can display the specific number of months in the calendar. Use the following command:  # cal -n 5

That’s it, we have covered everything you need to know about the cal command.

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