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Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004 23:45:24 -0400
From: Dmitri Tikhonov <dmitri@netilla.com>
To: dev@apr.apache.org
Subject: Case-sensitive months in apr_date_parse_rfc
Message-ID: <20040611034524.GA26611@netilla.com>
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Today I saw this date string out in the wild:

'saturday, 11-jun-2004 16:10:27 GMT'

While looks very much like a date format for which I submitted a patch
over a year ago[1], its month starts with a lower-case letter.  This
string cannot be parsed using apr_date_parse_rfc.  I am sure in the
myriad of date string specifications there are rules against lower-case
month names, but the function in question wants to be lenient in what
it parses.

I wanted to submit a patch where apr_date_parse_rfc does not care about
month cases (achieved by adding a support for a symbol that would match
a letter of any capitalization, changing the masks correspondingly, and
converting monstr to its usual @$$ form before checking months array),
when I noticed that apr_date_checkmask is not a static function and
others may use it in a way that would not allow introduction of a new
symbol for isalpha[2].

The question therefore becomes, what is the best way to transform
apr_date_parse_rfc to support case-insensitive months without
sacrificing much performance and breaking the APIs by introducing a new
special symbol?

One way is to make a maximum of eight calls to apr_date_checkmask instead
of one for each format: "@@@" || "@@$" || "@$@"... instead of the current
"@$$", but it is just yucky[3].  Given the constraints, I am stuck.

Suggestions?

  - Dmitri.

[1] http://cvs.apache.org/viewcvs.cgi/apr-util/misc/apr_date.c?r1=1.15&r2=1.16
[2] From apr_date_checkmask description:
      <x> - exact match for any other character
[3] This could probably be optimized in a loop whose first iteration would
    catch 99% of cases where month string fits @$$ format, and then, if
    no matches are found, mangle "@$$" seven more times until something
    (or nothing) is found.


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