ietf-nntp Minor corrections to 11.4

Charles Lindsey chl at clw.cs.man.ac.uk
Mon Sep 4 01:51:56 PDT 2000


In <yl3djka6vh.fsf at windlord.stanford.edu> Russ Allbery <rra at stanford.edu> writes:

>       Clients SHOULD use the eight-digit date form with four digits for
>       the year.  The six-digit form is provided solely for backwards
>       compatibility.

>I'd even be comfortable with making that a MUST, but existing practice
>definitely supports a SHOULD.

I agree. In the days when there might have been some expectation of
getting this spec out of the door before Y2k happened, it made some sense
to continue to accept 2 digits. No longer so.

Various early versions of INN (inlcuding one server I sometimes connect
to) interpret the 2 digit form incorrectly since y2k, as does the model
NNTP implementation. So when people fix those bugs, they might as well
switch to 4 digits regardless and save the hassle of that "nearest the
current year" hack (which is a bit of a pig to implement).

-- 
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
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