Re: Expiration

Albert Lunde (Albert-Lunde@nwu.edu)
Tue, 28 Nov 1995 14:25:27 -0600

At 12:04 PM 11/28/95, Mary Morris wrote:
>One more question here. What is the formal syntax for defining
>the expiration date of a document? Would the following work?
>
>
><META HTTP-EQUIV="Expires" Content="Jan-01-96">
>
>Also, does anyone know which caching servers recognise and
>use the expiration date?

I think there are two related issues here:

Any time you are saying HTTP-EQUIV you are saying the Content should
conform to the syntax of an HTTP header (and there is an Expires: header).

Servers are free to ignore META tags and not put the information out as
HTTP headers, or to ignore information that conflicts with other
server-generated headers. I'm not sure what servers, if any, do parse the
META tags and generate HTTP headers, though I know some robots read them
directly from the HTML.

---
    Albert Lunde                      Albert-Lunde@nwu.edu