Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!uwm.edu!linac!mp.cs.niu.edu!rickert From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) Newsgroups: news.software.b Subject: Re: The anomolous handling of bad dates in cnews. Message-ID: <1991May23.035202.31699@mp.cs.niu.edu> Date: 23 May 91 03:52:02 GMT References: <1991Apr25.223301.27280@world.std.com> <1991May16.211311.3544@eua.ericsson.se> <1991May23.024533.9731@world.std.com> Organization: Northern Illinois University Lines: 27 In article <1991May23.024533.9731@world.std.com> geoff@world.std.com (Geoff Collyer) writes: > >As I said above, inews rewrites the date, if it can understand the date >at all, into canonical form. If it can't understand the date using a >fairly tolerant parser (getabsdate for Date: and getdate [for now] for >Expires:), I don't think substituting the current date is a great >idea. If substituting the current date is a bad idea, what would you think is a better idea? Silently dumping the article, perhaps? Just bouncing the article with an error message back to the user might seem sensible. Except that if there is a user there to bounce it back to, then substituting the current date is absolutely the correct thing to do. Never forget that some users may be posting via an nntp connection which might quite possibly be closed before the date is scanned. The only evidence they see is that the article never appears. This is the same symptom as they would see if the article is mailed to a moderator with a slow response time, so it is pretty hard to see the difference. -- =*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*= Neil W. Rickert, Computer Science Northern Illinois Univ. DeKalb, IL 60115 +1-815-753-6940