NAME

remind − a simple reminder service

SYNOPSIS

remind [ time ] [ message ]

DESCRIPTION

Remind implements a simple reminder service similar to calendar(1), but uses alert(1) instead of mail(1).  Reminders can be specified from the command line, or remind can extract information from a file in the user’s home directory.  In the latter case, remind first looks for the file reminders, then for the file calendar. 

If the time argument is specified on the command line, remind will post a reminder at that time.  The text of the reminder can be specified in the message argument, or read from standard input.  The time specification is as for the at(1) command, except that a day of the week or “week” option is not allowed.  Times after the “present” refer to today; specifying a time before the time of execution will cause a reminder to be posted for “tomorrow”.

Typical examples of the use of remind in this mode are

 
remind 1230pm "Lunch time."
cat dailyreminders | remind 9am

If remind is executed with no arguments, it will search the file reminders or calendar in the user’s home directory for references to today’s date, and post reminders for all such references that mention a time.  The following forms of time are acceptable;

 
9:30, 9:30am, 9:30 am, 9:30pm, 9:30 pm, 21:30.

Entries in the reminders file can contain dates in various forms, including those acceptable to calendar(1).  In addition, remind will recognize lines containing forms such as “every Wednesday” and “every day”.  Abbreviations for month and day names are accepted.  Remind filters the file through the “C” preprocessor cpp, so other files such as a shared calendar file can be #included. 

Text from the reminders file is also filtered through nroff(1) before it is sent to alert(1).  This allows various useful types of formatting, such as word wrapping, justification and centering, to be performed.  Another useful consequence is that text can be “hidden” from alert(1) by enclosing it in an nroff(1) comment.  This is particularly useful for text which is needed to flag a time or date, but which need not appear in the reminder.  Nroff(1) commands can be included in the text, if care is taken with various troublesome characters such as ’ and \. To facilitate nroff(1) formatting, several character substitutions are made on the text before it goes to nroff(1). Specifically,

 
; is replaced with a newline
character \001 is replaced with ’
character \002 is replaced with ;
character \003 is replaced with \

Remind uses at(1) to schedule the reminders, so the granularity of the reminders will be determined by that of at(1).

FILES

./remindersfile to be searched for reminders ./calendaralternate reminders file

SEE ALSO

alert(1), at(1), calendar(1), cron(8), nroff(1)

InterViews  —  Last change: 27 April 1987