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To: Brian Somers <brian@awfulhak.org>
Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org
Subject: Re: fetch
References: <199705311510.QAA12461@awfulhak.demon.co.uk>
From: Andrew Gierth <andrew@erlenstar.demon.co.uk>
In-Reply-To: Brian Somers's message of Sat, 31 May 1997 16:10:32 +0100
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Date: 31 May 1997 23:54:31 +0100
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>>>>> "Brian" == Brian Somers <brian@awfulhak.org> writes:

 Brian> Hi,
 Brian> My ISP (demon.co.uk) sends http dates like this:

 Brian>     Sat, 31-May-97 10:48:56 GMT

 Brian> According to http.c in the fetch sources, it's expecting
 Brian> a full year here, ie.

 Brian>     Sat, 31-May-1997 10:48:56 .....

 Brian> Has anyone any objection to me making it allow the first ?

If fetch does not support the 31-May-97 format, then it violates the
RFCs and should be fixed, regardless of whether it offends anyone's
sensibilities concerning Y2K issues.

Technically, Demon's server is misbehaving slightly, since the three
allowed date formats are:

       Sun, 06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 GMT    ; RFC 822, updated by RFC 1123
       Sunday, 06-Nov-94 08:49:37 GMT   ; RFC 850, obsoleted by RFC 1036
       Sun Nov  6 08:49:37 1994         ; ANSI C's asctime() format

and it is using the second of these with a shortened weekday name,
but the robustness principle requires that fetch should cope with this.
HTTP/1.1 requires that only the first form be generated, but the
homepages server only does HTTP/1.0, which allows either of the first
two forms.

-- 
Andrew.