At 12:17 PM 9/10/2001, Pete Resnick wrote:
On 9/10/01 at 1:17 PM -0500, Eric A. Hall wrote:
1) There does not appear to be a requirement for a space after the colon
in the header field...
That is correct. Though a space definitely makes it more readable and lots
of clients produce the space, it is not required at all, I've seen
messages without, and I've never seen anybody fail to parse a header
without a space.
To carry the explanation further:
The original specification (RFC733) was quite careful to make the presence
of an arbitrary of spaces (1 or more) entirely optional.
As with a number of format standards, RFC733/822/2822 walks a tightrope
between specifying a computer-processable format and a human-friendly
format. The latter was the reason for variable spacing.
d/
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Dave Crocker <mailto:dcrocker(_at_)brandenburg(_dot_)com>
Brandenburg InternetWorking <http://www.brandenburg.com>
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