[Gllug] Standards for the format of email headers

[Chris Bell]

On Wed 15 Aug, Richard Cohen wrote:
> On Wed, 15 Aug 2001, Chris Bell wrote:
> 
> >    Is there a correct standard layout/order for email headers? My system is
> > set to sort emails by date, and consistently mis-interprets the date on
> > emails from one or two sources. The only differences that I can see are that
> > the order of the various lines, and specifically the order of the details in
> > the date line, are different from others on this list.
> >
> >    For example, one of the mis-interpreted date lines reads:
> > >        Date: Tue, Aug 14 2001 10:18:26 +0100
> >
> >    where one interpreted correctly reads
> > >        Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2001 08:35:11 +0100 (BST)
> >
> >    I would not be surprised if both are correct, and that my system is
> > just failing to read them correctly.
> 
> RFC2822 specifies this:
> 
> -----
> zone            =       (( "+" / "-" ) 4DIGIT) / obs-zone
> 
> obs-zone        =       "UT" / "GMT" /          ; Universal Time
>                                                 ; North American UT
>                                                 ; offsets
>                         "EST" / "EDT" /         ; Eastern:  - 5/ - 4
>                         "CST" / "CDT" /         ; Central:  - 6/ - 5
>                         "MST" / "MDT" /         ; Mountain: - 7/ - 6
>                         "PST" / "PDT" /         ; Pacific:  - 8/ - 7
> 
>                         %d65-73 /               ; Military zones - "A"
>                         %d75-90 /               ; through "I" and "K"
>                         %d97-105 /              ; through "Z", both
>                         %d107-122               ; upper and lower case
> 
> -----
> 
> And lots of other similar stuff.  The full RFC is at
> ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc2822.txt
> 
> >From my reading of it, the first example given (without (BST)) is actually
> correct according to this RFC, and the second is entirely incorrect - BST is
> not a recognised timezone, so it shouldn't be there:
> 
> "Other multi-character (usually between 3 and 5) alphabetic time zones have
> been used in Internet messages.  Any such time zone whose meaning is not
> known SHOULD be considered equivalent to "-0000" unless there is out-of-band
> information confirming their meaning.  "
> 
> "Though "-0000" also indicates Universal Time, it is used to indicate that
> the time was generated on a system that may be in a local time zone other
> than Universal Time and therefore indicates that the date-time contains no
> information about the local time zone.  "
> 
> And lots more similar stuff...
> 
> Which mailer are you using?
> 
> Cheers
> Richard
> 
> 
   Many thanks, it looks as if month before 2-digit day is incorrect, but
neither a 2- nor 4- digit year, nor "BST" give problems with my old Acorn
system, due to be replaced with Linux as soon as I can sort my firewalling.
(Although it does have the advantage of being immune to most viruses).

-- 
Chris Bell


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