NEW ISSUE: date formats in BNF and spec text, was: RFC 2616 Errata: Misc. Typos

Travis Snoozy (Volt) schrieb:
> 2006-12-18 16:12 -0800, Henrik Nordstrom said:
> 
>>> 3. Section 14.18, page 124:
>>>
>>> The field value is an HTTP-date, as described in section 3.3.1; it MUST
>> be sent in <ins>the </ins>RFC 1123 [8]<del>-</del><ins> </ins>date format.
>>
>> The section has already been rewritten to read
>> "MUST be sent in rfc1123-date format."
>> http://www.w3.org/Protocols/HTTP/1.1/rfc2616bis/draft-lafon-rfc2616bis-
>> latest.html#rfc.section.14.18
>>
>> but perhaps you are right that there should still be a "the" infront..

I'll let the native English speakers vote on that one :-)

>> in such case it also also applies to 14.21 which uses the exact same
>> language.
> 
> On closer inspection, shouldn't the BNF for that section (14.18) be "rfc1123-date" and not "HTTP-date"? I mean, why say it's an HTTP-date, but only RFC 1123 form is allowed (conflicting with the definition of HTTP-date)*? Likewise, shouldn't we just use the rfc1123-date moniker throughout the document whenever explicitly referring to only dates in RFC 1123 format?

I have thought about that myself, but didn't have time to bring it up yet.

> -- Travis
> 
> * Perhaps to answer my own question: it could be that the BNF is intending to represent the loosest set of values the field could take, i.e., that an implementation MUST be able to parse a message containing such a construct, even if generating such a message would be in violation of the specification. Then that leaves the question of whether or not Date exists in HTTP/1.0, and if not, if there's any compelling reason to use HTTP-date over rfc1123-date.

Best regards, Julian

Received on Tuesday, 19 December 2006 09:09:57 UTC