ASCII Advent

asciiadvent is a simple C program that generates an ASCII advent calendar with days punched according to the system's local time. Date placement is random but deterministic with a seed to ensure that layout remains consistent across advent.

See also the Unix utility paste to integrate the calendar alongside other ASCII art, as has been done for the yarrie.net IRC network message of the day.

Downloads

• asciiadvent.c licensed under CC0

Example

./asciiadvent
  x   x   x  18
 23   x   x  14
 19   x  21   x
  x  16   x   x
  x   x  24  20
  x  17  22  15

Usage

Compile the C file using any compiler, there are no prerequisites. To differentiate your calendar from other instances it is recommended that you input a seed by providing a large number as an argument. -l can also be provided to forgo random date placement and generate a linear calendar.

Credit

Thank you to Rebecca who provided the randomisation algorithm and code.

Contributions

Please email any feedback or patches to yarrie@yarrie.net, I cherish all correspondence.

Last updated 2025/12/13