Copyright © 2005 Michael K K Montague
Permission is granted to make and distribute whole or partial copies of this document without any restrictions.
RemindMe is a tool to manage your calendar.
RemindMe is used to keep track of dates. I will start with an example reminder file.
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;; Example Reminders
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jan 1 remind [New Year's Day].
second sun may remind [Mother's Day].
tue on or after nov 2 remind [Election Day].
4 aug 1966 every year remind [My Birthday].
19 may 2005 previous week remind [A Final Exam].
10 may 2005 every week for 10 weeks remind [Swimming Lessons].
12 may and 19 may remind [Final Exam].
These lines are comments; everything after ; on a line is ignored.
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;; Example Reminders
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January 1st every year is New Year's day. jan 1 is the date that we are matching; it also could have been written 1 jan. There is no year specified. That means that it will match January 1st every year. remind is the action we want to happen when there is a match and New Year's Day is the message. Finally, the statement must be terminated with a period (.).
jan 1 remind [New Year's Day].
The second Sunday in May is Mother's day. The first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and last day of a month can be specified. Both the month and year are optional.
second sun may remind [Mother's Day].
In the USA, the Tuesday on or after November 2nd is election day. This could have also been specified as tue after nov 1.
tue on or after nov 2 remind [Election Day].
Sometimes it is nice to have a base date and then to be reminded at a regular interval. My birthday is a good example of this. Follow a date by every, an optional number, and day, week, month, or year.
4 aug 1966 every year remind [My Birthday].
To get advanced notification of an event, use previous followed by an optional number and day or week. This says to remind you in advance of the event.
19 may 2005 previous week remind [A Final Exam].
To specifying a repeating event which goes on for a fixed amount of time use every and for. To repeat until a specific date, use until.
10 may 2005 every week for 10 weeks remind [Swimming Lessons].
If you want to have multiple dates for a single action, use and.
12 may and 19 may and first mon jun remind [Final Exam].
Finally, to run the example reminder file, use runrme. The following command will work if the file is called example.rme.
runrme example.rme
A reminder file consists of statements. Each statement is a date specifier followed by an action and terminated with a period. Each date specifier may optionally have a previous clause: this says to remind about this event ahead of time.
A date contains four parts: a day of the month, a day of the week, a month, and a year. The parts can be specified in any order and they are all optional. The date must be valid.
April Fool's day is April 1st.
apr 1 remind [April Fool's Day].
april 1 remind [April Fool's Day].
1 apr remind [April Fool's Day].
The third Monday in January is Martin Luther King Day.
third mon jan remind [Martin Luther King Day].
third monday january remind [Martin Luther King Day].
In the USA, the Tuesday after November 1st is election day.
tue after nov 1 remind [Election Day].
tuesday after 1 nov remind [Election Day].
tue on or after nov 2 remind [Election Day].
In the USA, the first week day on or after April 15th is when income taxes are due.
mon tue wed thu fri on or after april 15 remind [Income Taxes Due].
My book club is the second Wednesday of every month.
second wednesday remind [Book Club].
My birthday is the 4th of August.
4 aug remind [My Birthday].
4 aug 1966 every year remind [My Birthday %(age)].
I have a final exam on May 19th and June 1st.
may 19 and jun 1 remind [Final Exam].
A specifier specifies on which dates the action should occur.
<specifier> := <date-specifier> [and <date-specifier>] ... [<previous>]
<date-specifier> := <date>
| <nth-weekday> <date>
| <offset> <date>
| <date> <every>
| <specifier-test>
| <specifier-set>
A date consists of zero or more of a day, a day name, a month, and a year. Each may be specified no more than once in any order. If day and day name are both specified, then month and year must be specified and the day and day name must not conflict.
<date> := [<day> | <dayname> | <month> | <year>] ...
<day> := 1 | 2 | ... | 31
<dayname> := mon | tue | ... | sun
| monday | tuesday | ... | sunday
<month> := jan | feb | ... | dec
| january | february | ... | december
<year> := 1800 | ... | 3000
The nth weekday is specified using one of first, second, etc. and a weekday. This will select dates which are the nth weekday of a month.
<nth-weekday> := <nth> <weekday>
<nth> := first | second | third | fourth | fifth | last
An offset is used to shift a date by some amount. The shift can be forward (after) or backwards (before). The amount is in weekdays.
<offset> := <weekday> <weekday> ... [on or] before
| <weekday> <weekday> ... [on or] after
Every is used to repeat a date at some regular interval. It can go on forever, stop after a certain number of times, or stop after a particular date. Finally, particular dates can be excluded using except.
<every> := every [<n>] <step> [<done>] [<except> ...]
<step> := day[s] | week[s] | month[s] | year[s]
<done> := until <date>
| for <n> <step>
<except> := except <date>
Previous is used to remind before an event.
<previous> := previous [<n>] [day | days | week | weeks]
<n> := 1 | 2 | ...
runrme is used to run a reminder file. Without any arguments, runrme will try to run a reminder file in a default location for today.
runrme [option] [date]
-b days
-a days
-f filename
date: day, month, and year in any order
month is jan, feb, ... dec
date specifies what date to use in running the reminder file; it defaults to today. runrme processes the reminder file for the date and then some number of days before and after. -b days specifies the number of days before; it defaults to zero. -a days specifies the number of days after; it defaults to zero.
-f filename specifies the reminder file to be used.
On Windows, the default filenames tried are as follows.
%USERPROFILE%\remindme.rme
%USERPROFILE%\remindme\remindme.rme
My Documents\remindme.rme
My Documents\RemindMe\remindme.rme
On Unix and Mac OS X, the default filenames tried are as follows.
~/.remindme
~/remindme.rme
~/.remindme/remindme.rme
~/remindme/remindme.rme
~/Documents/remindme.rme
~/Documents/RemindMe/remindme.rme
<action> := remind <string>
| evaluate <expression>
| eval <expression>
<string> := [ ... ]
Use \] to specify a ] in a string and \\ to
specify a \.
date is a TSCM type.
Get the day, month, and year parts of a date.
Get the day name for a particular date.
(day-name (date 28 4 2005)) => thursday
Return the number of days between date1 and date2.
(days-between (date 28 4 2005) (date 20 4 2005)) => 8
Add or subtract n days to the date and return the resulting date.
test-specifiermakes proc be the specifier for name. The return value oftest-specifieris unspecified.The proc must be a procedure which takes a single argument, a date, and return
#fif the date does not match.(define (friday-the-13th d) (if (and (= (day d) 13) (eq? (day-name d) 'friday)) #t #f)) (test-specifier friday-the-13th "friday-the-13th")
set-specifiermakes proc be the specifier for name. The return value ofset-specifieris unspecified.The proc must be a procedure which takes a single argument, a year, and return a list of zero or more dates which match for the year. Return the empty list,
'(), if no dates match.(define (friday-the-13th y) (define (generate m y) (if (> m 12) '() (if (eq? (day-name (date 13 m y)) 'friday) (cons (date 13 m y) (generate (+ m 1) y)) (generate (+ m 1) y)))) (generate 1 y)) (set-specifier friday-the-13th "friday-the-13th")
remind-fieldmakes proc by the field for name. The return value ofremind-fieldis unspecified.The proc must be a procedure which takes three arguments: the current date, the base date, and the match date. Using the Tiny Scheme procedure,
display, the result of proc replaces the field in the output.The current date is the date that RemindMe is currently using to match against possible reminders. When RemindMe is run on a particular date, typically today, the current date is that particular date. When RemindMe is run to generate a calendar, say for a month, the current date will be each day of the month as RemindMe walks through the days of the month.
The base date is the date specified in the reminder. In the following examples the current date is 12 apr 2004.
(define (base-date cd bd md) bd) (remind-field base-date "base-date")12 apr 1966 every year remind [%(base-date)]. => #<date: 12 apr 1966> 12 may 1966 every month remind [%(base-date)]. => #<date: 12 apr 1966> 12 jan every month remind [%(base-date)]. => #<date: 12 jan 2004>The match date is date which actually matched the reminder. If there is no previous then the match date and the current date will always be the same. If there is a previous then the match date might be after the current date. As before, in the following examples the current date is 12 apr 2004.
(define (current-match cd bd md) (list cd md)) (remind-field current-match "current-match")12 apr 2004 remind [%(current-match)]. => (#<date: 12 apr 2004> #<date: 12 apr 2004>) 16 apr 2004 previous 10 days remind [%(current-match)]. => (#<date: 12 apr 2004> #<date: 16 apr 2004>)Here is a useful example. Say you want to keep track of a reminder for someone's birthday as well as when they were born.
(define (age cd bd md) (- (year cd) (year bd))) (remind-field age "age")4 aug 1966 every year remind [Michael's Birthday; he is %(age) years old.]. => Michael's Birthday; he is 38 years old.