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httpdatehttp-headerslast-modified

last-modified http header field points to future on some servers, why?


for example consider an url from php.net, let's be it: http://pl2.php.net/manual/en/function.time.php

gmt time when I fetched this was : 7:32 AM and my local time was 8:32 AM winter european time (CET)

and the header is :

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Tue, 08 Nov 2011 07:23:40 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.21 (FreeBSD) mod_ssl/2.2.21 OpenSSL/0.9.8k DAV/2 PHP/5.3.8 with Suhosin-Patch
X-Powered-By: PHP/5.3.8
Content-language: en
Set-Cookie: LAST_LANG=en; expires=Wed, 07-Nov-2012 07:23:40 GMT; path=/; domain=.php.net
Last-Modified: Tue, 08 Nov 2011 10:03:04 GMT
Vary: Cookie
Link: <http://php.net/time>; rel=shorturl
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Content-Type: text/html;charset=utf-8

but Last-Modified field points about 2.5 hours in the future, why ?

and there also is date field which seems to be correct for file modification time, but what is the last-modified then for ?

This was downloaded with php 5.3.8 with libcurl.


Solution

  • I have to say their server is improperly configured.