---
name: "hodie"
section: "1"
platform: "linux"
package: "hodie"
version: "1.5.0-4"
release: "Debian 13 (Trixie)"
platforms: ["linux"]
url: "https://new.carta.tech/hodie"
---

# hodie(1)

Print current date and time... in Latin

## NAME

hodie - Print current date and time... in Latin

## SYNOPSIS

**hodie** \[ *OPTION* \]...

## DESCRIPTION

**hodie** prints out the current date using classic Latin, and in addition also prints it out and time using Roman numerals.

## OPTIONS

- \-h, --help

  Print short help message with syntax

- \-v, --verbose

  Print months and days (pridie, Kalends, Nones, Ides) full and not the respective abbreviations (standard mode of operation)

  *Two occurrences of* -v *as well as the use of* -vv  *or* --extremely-verbose  will include the numerals where applicable fully declined, as in 'ante diem **quintum** Kalends Septembres'.

- \-n, --numerals

  Don't print anything in Latin - only the date and time as Roman numerals.

- \-x, --force-numerals

  Print both the verbose latin and the date and time as Roman numerals.

- \-c, --classic, --auc

  Print the year in the classic manner *ab urbe condita* instead of the more modern *anno domini .*

- \-a, --ante-diem

  Print the date expressing the number of days to the next main day with the *ante diem* expression instead of ablative case.

- \-d, --date

  Print out any date. This has a rather special syntax, with a keyword following the  *-d* flag choosing input format. See section on  *DATE INPUT* below.

- \-r, --republican OFFSET

  Print out the date dated  *ab urbe tua condita* with the offset counted in years as compared to the modern european kalendar (originating with the hypothetical birth of christ). **hodie** *-r -753* would be equivalent with **hodie** *-c*

- \--version

  Print out the version number of this release and exit. No matter whether other options appear on the command line or not.

## DATE INPUT

Following the  *-d* or the *--date* option flags, the first item  **must** be one of the following:

- verbose

  In this case, the year, month and day are given by following the *verbose* keyword by the flags  *-y, --year, -m, --month, -d, --day* for year, month and date respectively

- ymd

  After this flag, the date comes in the format *YYYY-MM-DD* , where the numbers may  be separated by any non-numeric character.

- dmy

  With this flag, the date is given as *DD-MM-YYYY*

- mdy

  With this flag, the date is given as *MM-DD-YYYY* Restrictions on the characters that may replace the hyphen apply as above.

## HISTORY

The story began on the 10. of August, 2000 (a.d. VI Id. Iul., MM). Having finished most of my assignment for my two-month summer job at Ericsson Eurolab Deutschland, Nuremberg, I was idling around on the Internet, and stumbled over the dotcomma-challenges *\<http://www.dotcomma.org\>* , where especially the Roman numeral challenge started my mind.

Almost an hour hacking, and there it was, another hour, and the *language support* was there. Before the night was over, I had written this man page and had the layout of a decent  **Makefile** drawn out mentally.

At the end of the next day, I was so far that I actually had the workings of  *RPM* worked out, constructed a .rpm-package and a .src.rpm-package, which was promptly released on my home-page, announced on freshmeat and uploaded to metalab (apps/misc :-).

Response was quick and plentiful. By now, I have compilation reports from Linux, FreeBSD and SCO Unixware 7; there are a few compatibility issues to put aside, but it works surprisingly well.

## RETURN VALUES

**hodie** returns zero. Always. If it doesn't, then something is **really** bad with the code.

For some really unreadable code, this means that **hodie** could be used as a strange replacement for **true**

## BUGS

It doesn't sanity check the input... telling **hodie** to display the roman form of the 99th of march gives a slightly jumbled output, which most definitely does not make sense.

Reports are more than welcome (e-mail below).

## AUTHOR

Now, who would come up with such a thing? Well, I'm Mikael Johansson, a rather all-round geek from Stockholm. I'm gravely interested in languages, in computers and in mathematics; a combination more dangerous than you might think.

E-mails to *\<mikael@johanssons.org\>*

## SEE ALSO

[**date**(1)](/date/1.md)