You have to first check RSS 2.0 specification:

"The publication date for the content in the channel. For example, the New York Times publishes on a daily basis, the publication date flips once every 24 hours. That's when the pubDate of the channel changes. All date-times in RSS conform to the Date and Time Specification of RFC 822, with the exception that the year may be expressed with two characters or four characters (four preferred)."

Now what is the format defined in RFC822:

 date-time   =  [ day "," ] date time        ; dd mm yy
                                                 ;  hh:mm:ss zzz

     day         =  "Mon"  / "Tue" /  "Wed"  / "Thu"
                 /  "Fri"  / "Sat" /  "Sun"

     date        =  1*2DIGIT month 2DIGIT        ; day month year
                                                 ;  e.g. 20 Jun 82

     month       =  "Jan"  /  "Feb" /  "Mar"  /  "Apr"
                 /  "May"  /  "Jun" /  "Jul"  /  "Aug"
                 /  "Sep"  /  "Oct" /  "Nov"  /  "Dec"

     time        =  hour zone                    ; ANSI and Military

     hour        =  2DIGIT ":" 2DIGIT [":" 2DIGIT]
                                                 ; 00:00:00 - 23:59:59

     zone        =  "UT"  / "GMT"                ; Universal Time
                                                 ; North American : UT
                 /  "EST" / "EDT"                ;  Eastern:  - 5/ - 4
                 /  "CST" / "CDT"                ;  Central:  - 6/ - 5
                 /  "MST" / "MDT"                ;  Mountain: - 7/ - 6
                 /  "PST" / "PDT"                ;  Pacific:  - 8/ - 7
                 /  1ALPHA                       ; Military: Z = UT;
                                                 ;  A:-1; (J not used)
                                                 ;  M:-12; N:+1; Y:+12
                 / ( ("+" / "-") 4DIGIT )        ; Local differential
                                                 ;  hours+min. (HHMM)

[download]

One example according to this format is Mon, 25 Jul 2005 00:13:28 GMT. If you follow RFC822 strictly, this should be Mon, 25 Jul 05 00:13:28 GMT. However as RSS 2.0 pointed out, the year is an exception. 4 digit year is not only allowed but also preferred.

Last but not least check out this yahoo rss service, which would give you a good example.

In reply to Re: XML::RSS timestamping items by pg
in thread XML::RSS timestamping items by tomazos

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