NAME
lunar (version 2.2) - a calendar conversion utility
SYNTAX
lunar [ -h ] [ -b ] [ -i ] [ -l ] year month day [ hour ]
DESCRIPTION
The program performs date conversion between the Gregorian Solar
Calendar (SC) and the Chinese Lunar Calendar (LC). Given a date in
either calendar, the program also outputs the corresponding "shengxiao"
(animal of the year) and "ganzhi" characters. The date range currently
covered is from about 1900 A.D. to 2049 A.D.
For the sake of convenience, we choose the convention such that the
solar and lunar year numbers of the first day of a lunar year are the
same. For example, SC 1991.2.15 is LC 1991.1.1, while SC 1991.2.14 is
LC 1990.12.30. Moreover, we choose the convention such that the solar
and lunar hour numbers (in 24-hour clock) of a date are the same,
although a lunar day starts at 23:00 of a solar day. This means that SC
1991.2.15.23 is LC 1991.1.2.23, while SC 1991.2.16.0 is LC 1991.1.2.0,
and SC 1991.2.16.1 is LC 1991.1.2.1.
The standard time of the Lunar Calendar is Beijing (Hong Kong) Standard
Time, not GMT. Be sure to adjust appropriately for other time zones
and "Daylight Saving Time".
In the Lunar Calendar, a normal year has 12 months, and a leap year
(run-nian) has 13 months, where the extra month is called a "leap
month" (run-yue). For example, the leap month that follows immediately
the 6-th lunar month is called the 6-th leap month. A (leap) month is
either a short or long one, which has 29 or 30 days respectively.
There are 10 gan’s and 12 zhi’s. The ganzhi labeling of the year,
month, day and hour of a date is a member of the Cartesian product
GxGxGxG, where G = {1,2,...,60}. For example, "jia-zi" is 1, "yi-chou"
is 2, and so on. The ganzhi of the j-th leap month is the same as that
of the j-th month.
The possible options are
b output ganzhi in special "bitmap" characters.
h output hanzi or Chinese characters encoded in (highest-bit-set)
GB code.
i convert a lunar date to solar date. The default is to convert a
solar date to a lunar date.
l indicate the month is a lunar leap month. This option is
meaningful only when the "-i" option is used.
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 2001 Fung F. Lee and Ricky Yeung
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the
Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or any later
version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc.,
59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307, USA.
The last version of this program was released on July 23, 1992 as
version 2.1a. This program was first released under the terms of GNU
GPL on October 28, 2001 as version 2.2. Both versions are identical
except for the license text.
AUTHORS
Fung F. Lee and Ricky Yeung
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The special "bitmap" file "lunar.bitmap" was contributed by Weimin Liu.
Special thanks to Hwei Chen Ti who extended the tables from 2001 to
2049.
BUGS
Bug reports and comments should be sent to lee@umunhum.stanford.edu.
DISCLAIMER
This software has no connection with our employers.
28 October 2001 lunar(1)