Newsgroups: news.software.b
Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer)
Subject: Re: Sequence of header fields
Message-ID: <1989Dec21.041350.5278@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
References: <1452@ybbs.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp>
Date: Thu, 21 Dec 89 04:13:50 GMT

In article <1452@ybbs.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp> kenji@ybbs.c.u-tokyo.ac.jp (Kenji Rikitake) writes:
>Bnews 2.11.19 requires following conditions to acceptable control messages:
>1. Subject: field should appear before Control: field.
>2. Approved: field should appear as the end of header fields
>  (i.e. after Lines: field).
> ...
>Questions: do any implicit requirements exist on each header field?

RFC1036 is silent about the matter, so RFC822 sets the rules.  RFC822 is
quite explicit:  the order of headers is arbitrary.

That's the theory.  In practice... to the best of our knowledge, C News
conforms to the standard and will work with any order.  I can't answer
for B News, I'm not sufficiently familiar with its insides.
-- 
1972: Saturn V #15 flight-ready|     Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
1989: birds nesting in engines | uunet!attcan!utzoo!henry henry@zoo.toronto.edu