Newsgroups: news.software.b
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: RFC 822 comments in dates
Message-ID: <1991May29.152525.9979@zoo.toronto.edu>
Date: Wed, 29 May 1991 15:25:25 GMT
References: <1991May27.211445.8379@mp.cs.niu.edu> <5JL4MZ3@taronga.hackercorp.com> <1991May28.151328.21097@zoo.toronto.edu> <1991May29.023150.7774@cs.cmu.edu>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

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