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From: bobm@rtech.UUCP (Bob Mcqueer)
Newsgroups: net.news.adm
Subject: more hobgoblins, thoughts on improving the situation
Message-ID: <431@rtech.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 3-Sep-86 18:00:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: rtech.431
Posted: Wed Sep  3 18:00:16 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 4-Sep-86 04:06:19 EDT
Distribution: net
Organization: Relational Technology Inc, Alameda CA
Lines: 41

[]---

Concerning the "#W" lines in map files: it seems to me that the "date"
portion of that line is a very useful piece of information, but non-adherence
to format is an even worse problem here than with the "#L" lines recently
discussed.  Looking over the map files, I see:

1) "date" format beginning with day-of-week
2) "date" format beginning with month (no day-of-week)
3) "date" format beginning with numeric day of month
4) six digit integer YYMMDD preceding semicolon
5) 4) following semicolon or with no semicolon.
6) MM/DD/YY at some random placement
7) variations with and without time-of-day portions

The above appear in a significant number of entries.  There are also many
entries which convey the desired information to a human reader, but
don't adhere to any of the above formats.

Please note: it is not my intention AT ALL to chastise anybody for not
entering the dates "properly".  I'm just noting that as things stand now,
it is difficult to write a routine which will reliably pick the date out of
most of these lines.

I was wondering.  Could part of the collection process for maintaining
mapfiles and building the distributed archives be attachment of a time stamp
to each entry indicating when it was received?  The date stamp would then
be in a consistent format.  True, this hides the fact that somebody may
have mailed the map maintainer an ancient entry, but I think the guarantee
of being able to machine parse the date is an equitable trade-off.

Another thought: there ought to be a little program floating around which
would check the validity of map entries, including the format of lines
which could reasonably be machine readable.  Is there such?  If so, making
the tool available and known would help matters.  If everybody had the tool,
and it produced explicit diagnostics, it might become reasonable for the map
maintainer to insist on proper format before including entries in the archives.

Bob McQueer
-- 
{amdahl, sun, mtxinu, hoptoad, cpsc6a}!rtech!bobm