[news.software.b] RFC 822 comments in dates

jm36@hogtown.andrew.cmu.edu (John Gardiner Myers) (05/29/91)

In article <1991May28.151328.21097@zoo.toronto.edu> henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) writes:
>[...]  Inscrutable garbage, e.g. an attempt to use an RFC822
>comment in RFC1036 where it is not legal, is a different story.

RFC822 comments are legal in RFC1036 date headers.  Section 2.1.2 of
RFC1036 states two requirements on the date format:

1) It must be acceptable (conform) to RFC822

2) It must be acceptable to the getdate(3) routine "that is provided
with the Usenet software."  (From the date of issue of the RFC, this
must refer to B-news.)

RFC822 comments pass both tests.  If you disagree, please cite chapter
and verse.

-- 
_.John G. Myers		Internet: John.G.Myers@andrew.cmu.edu
(412) 268-2314		LoseNet:  ...!seismo!ihnp4!wiscvm.wisc.edu!give!up

henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer) (05/29/91)

In article <1991May29.023150.7774@cs.cmu.edu> jm36@hogtown.andrew.cmu.edu (John Gardiner Myers) writes:
>>[...]  Inscrutable garbage, e.g. an attempt to use an RFC822
>>comment in RFC1036 where it is not legal, is a different story.
>
>RFC822 comments are legal in RFC1036 date headers.  Section 2.1.2 of
>RFC1036 states two requirements on the date format:

Entirely irrelevant.  If you examine RFC822 section 5.1, you will find
that "Fri, 22 Jan 1991 00:00:00 +0200 (EDT)" is *not* a valid RFC822 date
because RFC822 date syntax has no provision for things in parentheses.
Now, mind you, "Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1991 00:00:00 +0200 (EDT)" is a valid
RFC822 date *header*, because the parenthesized comment is not part of the
date.  However, this is *not* a valid RFC1036 date header, because the
RFC1036 header syntax is a restricted subset of RFC822 header syntax, and
comments are not included; see section 2 of RFC1036.  (Note that RFC1036
does have a specific provision for a somewhat RFC822-comment-like thing
in the "From" header, but nowhere else.)
-- 
"We're thinking about upgrading from    | Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
SunOS 4.1.1 to SunOS 3.5."              |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu  utzoo!henry