CLF = WTF?

[Richard Gaskin]

I'm writing a web log analysis tool for my sites with Rev (why does 
every hosting company's built-in log tool suck?), and after I parse out 
the date stamp element I find it won't go through Rev's convert command 
without throwing an error.

Apache's Common Log Format (CLF) uses this form for dates:

   10/Oct/2000:13:55:36 -0700
<http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/logs.html#common>

This is different from Rev"s "internet date", used by many other processes:

  Sat, 7 Mar 2009 12:20:48 -0800

So my question here is twofold:

1. Why did whomever spec'd CLF invent a novel date format rather than 
simply use a more prevelant form?  Is there a benefit to this novelty 
that I've overlooked?  Or is it even all that novel?  Heck, maybe it's 
used throughout a million other web processes and I've just never 
noticed it before; it would seem strange, though, that no one who's ever 
worked on Rev noticed it either.

2. Right now I'm parsing the CLF date and reformatting it into "internet 
date" using about a dozen lines of code, and maybe it could be 
simplified a bit more but what I'd ideally like is the efficiency of a 
one-liner.  Anyone here know of a what to alter CLF dates into a form 
that will survive Rev's "convert" command in one or two lines?


TIA -

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World
  Revolution training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
  Webzine for Rev developers: http://www.revjournal.com