[imp] Dates read incorrectly in current HEAD DIMP (and IMP)

[Joseph Brennan]

--On Thursday, August 30, 2007 19:21 -0400 Dan Brown <dan at familybrown.org> 
wrote:

> I've had a problem for a while with messages from a particular sender
> not date-sorting correctly.  The date header from a recent message
> appears as:
>
> Date: 8/30/2007 5:59:28 PM
>
> DIMP shows the date column as simply "05:59:28 PM", and it appears
> before a message dated 1/30/02.
>
> While I'm at it, there is another date header that doesn't seem to
> sort correctly:
>
> Date: 12/08/03 20:16:07
>
> For this message, the date is shown correctly, but it sorts as before
> the 1/30/02 message.



The sender's software is broken.  That format is not even close to
what is defined in RFC 2822 (or the older 822).  I wouldn't expect
any client or imap server to be able to sort those by date.

I would expect those to be shown with no date, and for them to sort
to the top or bottom.

Do you consider "12/08/03" correctly shown as 12 Aug 03, 8 Dec 03,
12 Aug 2003, or 8 Dec 2003?  Since the format is not defined, it's
hard to say when it's parsed correctly.

Joseph Brennan
Lead Email Systems Engineer
Columbia University Information Technology