Newsgroups: news.software.b
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Strange Header
Message-ID: <1990Oct12.172131.15549@zoo.toronto.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1990Sep30.230320.970@mccc.uucp> <1990Oct1.151249.16328@zoo.toronto.edu> <1990Oct2.185123.8683@mccc.uucp> <15940@bfmny0.BFM.COM>
Date: Fri, 12 Oct 90 17:21:31 GMT

In article <15940@bfmny0.BFM.COM> tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff) writes:
>This strips the offending headers.  Something like this should go into
>the next releases of 'rn' and B News, since we musn't ask C News to be
>more tolerant of the messy ol' real world.

We're happy to be more tolerant of the real world when circumstances so
indicate.  Unfortunately, in this case it's not so clear.  I find no
statement in RFCs 822 and 1036 that an empty header is synonymous with
a missing header, and no statement in B2.11 inews(8) that empty headers
are deleted, so it is not clear to me that deleting empty headers is
either desirable or correct.

For headers that RFC1036 demands be non-empty, it would probably be a
good idea for inews to reject empty headers as an error.  With luck,
this will be attended to in the inews rewrite now underway.
-- 
"...the i860 is a wonderful source     | Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
of thesis topics."    --Preston Briggs |  henry@zoo.toronto.edu   utzoo!henry