ietf-nntp HDR replacement text

Clive D.W. Feather clive at demon.net
Tue Jul 2 04:10:14 PDT 2002


Russ Allbery said:
> 9.5.3  The HDR Extension

>   If the header occurs in a given article multiple times, only the value
>   of the first occurrence is returned by HDR.

Is that too prescriptive ? Would it be better to say "only the value of one
of the occurrences is returned" ?

>   If the requested header is present
>   but empty in a given article, a line for that article is included in the
>   output but the header content portion of the line is empty.  If the
>   requested header is not present in a given article, no line for that
>   article is given in the output.

Is that consistent with other commands ? I seem to recall that we decided
that OVER would treat no such header and empty header as equivalent.

>   If the optional argument is an
>   article number and no article with that number exists in the current
>   group, a 423 error response shall be returned.

I don't think this is the right thing to do. Consider:

    HDR subject 12345
    HDR subject 12345-12345

Shouldn't these always return the same thing ? If there's no article 12345,
what will/should the latter do ? Compare it to:

    HDR subject 12345-12999

when none of the articles in that range exist.

-- 
Clive D.W. Feather  | Work:  <clive at demon.net>   | Tel:  +44 20 8371 1138
Internet Expert     | Home:  <clive at davros.org>  | Fax:  +44 870 051 9937
Demon Internet      | WWW: http://www.davros.org | Mobile: +44 7973 377646
Thus plc            |                            | NOTE: fax number change



More information about the ietf-nntp mailing list