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(emacs)Date Formats

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Date Formats
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   Here are some sample diary entries, illustrating different ways of
formatting a date.  The examples all show dates in American order
(month, day, year), but Calendar mode supports European order (day,
month, year) as an option.

     4/20/93  Switch-over to new tabulation system
     apr. 25  Start tabulating annual results
     4/30  Results for April are due
     */25  Monthly cycle finishes
     Friday  Don't leave without backing up files

   The first entry appears only once, on April 20, 1993.  The second and
third appear every year on the specified dates, and the fourth uses a
wildcard (asterisk) for the month, so it appears on the 25th of every
month.  The final entry appears every week on Friday.

   You can use just numbers to express a date, as in `MONTH/DAY' or
`MONTH/DAY/YEAR'.  This must be followed by a nondigit.  In the date
itself, MONTH and DAY are numbers of one or two digits.  The optional
YEAR is also a number, and may be abbreviated to the last two digits;
that is, you can use `11/12/1989' or `11/12/89'.

   Dates can also have the form `MONTHNAME DAY' or `MONTHNAME DAY,
YEAR', where the month's name can be spelled in full or abbreviated to
three characters (with or without a period).  Case is not significant.

   A date may be "generic"; that is, partially unspecified.  Then the
entry applies to all dates that match the specification.  If the date
does not contain a year, it is generic and applies to any year.
Alternatively, MONTH, DAY, or YEAR can be a `*'; this matches any
month, day, or year, respectively.  Thus, a diary entry `3/*/*' matches
any day in March of any year; so does `march *'.

   If you prefer the European style of writing dates--in which the day
comes before the month--type `M-x european-calendar' while in the
calendar, or set the variable `european-calendar-style' to `t' _before_
using any calendar or diary command.  This mode interprets all dates in
the diary in the European manner, and also uses European style for
displaying diary dates.  (Note that there is no comma after the
MONTHNAME in the European style.)  To go back to the (default) American
style of writing dates, type `M-x american-calendar'.

   You can use the name of a day of the week as a generic date which
applies to any date falling on that day of the week.  You can abbreviate
the day of the week to three letters (with or without a period) or spell
it in full; case is not significant.