OTOH, "header line" seems ambiguous to me - I think you must mean
something
_besides_ header field because you're not using either "header
field" or the
common abbreviation "header". :)
With respect, you are an "unaverage reader" :-) I use "header line"
in
documentation about Exim (for example), because I strongly suspect
that,
to the "average" reader, the word "field" is strange and esoteric when
used in this kind of sense.
There's precedent in RFC 2821 which has a section 3.8.2 Received Lines
in
Gatewaying, and refers to lines rather than fields throughout section
4.4
Trace Information. Also, RFC 2822 says that header fields are lines,
albeit with rules for folding them into a multi-line form. See also
section 3.6.3. Destination address fields for some slack editing - line
appears five times where field would be more correct.
I guess you could say I'm "old school" :)
I think of header fields as being able to be wrapped onto one or more
lines, each terminated by CRLF.