Newsgroups: news.software.b
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@zoo.toronto.edu (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Header woes, innocuous errors, and users
Message-ID: <1991Jun24.195355.15669@zoo.toronto.edu>
Date: Mon, 24 Jun 1991 19:53:55 GMT
References: <15329@encore.Encore.COM>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology

In article <15329@encore.Encore.COM> jjoy@encore.com (Jennifer Joy) writes:
>Somewhere (and I hope someone can point me to the right spot) one
>of the RFCs must say why an optional header line, if included, cannot
>be blank...

RFC1036, section 2, description of header syntax, says that the colon is
followed by a space.

Personally, I think this particular restriction is dumb, probably
unintentional -- the wording suggests that the possibility of contentless
headers was never considered -- and due for removal when 1036 is revised,
but at present there's only one way to read it.
-- 
"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