A thread from the remind-fans mailing list about how to specify events that repeat across multiple months in the remind program.

From remind-fans at ryanb.org Tue Jun 14 02:10:08 2005

Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2005 02:10:12 -0700 (PDT) From: Ryan Barrett <…> To: remind-fans at whatexit.org Subject: multiple months?

hi all. i picked up remind a few days ago as a replacement for my clunky birthday reminder script and, i’m sad to say, cron jobs that reminded me to pay the rent and other bills. so far, i’m loving it!

given remind’s sophisticated date handling, though, i was surprised to find that it doesn’t support date specs with multiple months. for example, this line:

7 Jan Apr June Sep MSG Prepay estimated income tax

gives this error:

/home/ryanb/.reminders(22): Month specified twice

i searched the man page, readme, google, and the list archives, but couldn’t find any way to specify multiple months. sure, i could split it up into four separate lines, but that’s kind of hackish.

am i missing something obvious? if not, i’m inclined to write a patch to allow multiple months in date specs. david, would that be appropriate?

-Ryan

— http://ryan.barrett.name/

From … Tue Jun 14 05:38:00 2005 Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2005 08:38:10 -0400 From: David F. Skoll <…> Reply-To: Users of the “REMIND” system <…> To: Users of the “REMIND” system Subject: Re: [Remind-Fans] multiple months?

Ryan Barrett wrote:

i searched the man page, readme, google, and the list archives, but couldn’t find any way to specify multiple months. sure, i could split it up into four separate lines, but that’s kind of hackish.

It’s the only way.

Regards,

David.

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From ryan at barrett.name Tue Jun 14 12:31:40 2005 Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2005 12:31:40 -0700 (PDT) From: Ryan Barrett <…> To: David F. Skoll <…> Subject: Re: [Remind-Fans] multiple months?

On Tue, 14 Jun 2005, David F. Skoll wrote:

It’s the only way.

fair enough. was that an intentional design decision? if not, i’d like to write a patch. would you mind? can you think of any reason i shouldn’t?

-Ryan

— http://ryan.barrett.name/

From … Tue Jun 14 14:10:50 2005 Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2005 17:10:46 -0400 From: David F. Skoll <…> To: Ryan Barrett <…> Subject: Re: [Remind-Fans] multiple months?

Hi, Ryan.

fair enough. was that an intentional design decision?

Not really; it was just the way I did it.

if not, i’d like to write a patch. would you mind? can you think of any reason i shouldn’t?

It will be rather complex, because it will tie in to the guts of the date computation algorithm. But if you manage to do it and it looks good, I’ll incorporate it.

(I expect the complexity will be a bit more than you bargained for when you look at the date calculation code. :-) )

Regards,

David.

From … Wed Jun 15 06:30:36 2005 Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2005 08:27:59 -0500 From: Tildar <…> To: Users of the REMIND system Subject: Re: [Remind-Fans] multiple months?

Thanks to David for the “multiple day example” earlier on the list, i pulled this on togather, it seems to work. Will it cover your needs?

FSET _M(M) monnum(trigdate()) == M REM 7 SATISFY [_M(1) || _M(4) || _M(6) || _M(9)] MSG Prepay estimated income tax

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From … Wed Jun 15 07:07:05 2005 Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2005 10:04:41 -0400 From: David F. Skoll <> Reply-To: Users of the “REMIND” system To: Tildar <…>, Users of the “REMIND” system Subject: Re: [Remind-Fans] multiple months?

Tildar wrote:

FSET _M(M) monnum(trigdate()) == M REM 7 SATISFY [_M(1) || _M(4) || _M(6) || _M(9)] MSG Prepay estimated income tax

Note that SATISFY is less efficient that specifying a month, but for this example, it’s probably OK.

It’s a cool hack, though! :-) Not sure how readable it is.

Regards,

David.

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