Re: OT: Re: Less is more

[Keith Moore <moore@xxxxxxxxxx>]

> > not really, because it's not representative of the kinds of errors 
> > that programmers make when writing 822 date parsers.
> 
> Frode's field was syntactically valid (as far as I could see). A 
> syntactically valid field is _never_ representative of "typical errors
> that programmers make".

If that field occurred in an actual message generated by an actual MUA
I'd claim it was a programmer error even if it was syntactically valid
:)  Anyone who put that in a shipping product ought to be sacked.

> If a program can't parse Frode's field, it can't parse the RFC822 date
> field syntax as specified. 

True, but it could quite possibly parse 99.999% of the dates that occur
in actual use, including dates that aren't valid - at which point the
inability to parse dates is insignificant in comparison to failures that
are due to other problems.  If you're concerned about reliability you
care about how well it works in actual use, not whether it handles
really obscure corner cases.  (security concerns are an exception -
since crackers specifically look for corner cases.)

--
Regime change 2004 - better late than never.