On 8 March 2013 06:28, Andy Wingo <wi...@pobox.com> wrote: > On Thu 24 Jan 2013 23:13, l...@gnu.org (Ludovic Courtès) writes: > >> scheme@(guile-user)> (use-modules(web client)(web uri)) >> scheme@(guile-user)> (http-get (string->uri "http://www.sqlite.org/";)) >> web/http.scm:768:6: In procedure parse-asctime-date: >> web/http.scm:768:6: Bad Date header: Thu, 24 Jan 2013 21:53:01 +0000 > > As you can see here: > > http://pretty-rfc.herokuapp.com/RFC2616#date-time-formats > > HTTP doesn't actually support other time zones. The date header being > reported by sqlite.org is invalid.
Correct, though ‘+0000’ is the right time zone, just the format is wrong (according to RFC 2616). A survey of HTTP sites I performed last year as research for another header issue in Guile showed something like 1% of those sites using the numeric timezone format, contrary to the specification. This is likely due to false reliance on RFC 1123 (quoted by Ludo in the original report), which indicates a preference for numeric timezones that are are indirectly forbidden by RFC 2616 (which states, timezone must be the string “GMT”) Interpretting ‘+0000’ timezone is sensible in a robust implementation, though what to do if a numeric timezone is given other than this? Convert it to GMT is one option, since the spec. defines that the header must be in this timezone.
