Nope, the date is when the message creator finalized the message prior to transport, not when it was received by any host in transit (which would be part of a Received: trace header). To quote the RFC (section 3.6.1, "The origination date field"),
The origination date field consists of the field name "Date" followed
by a date-time specification.
orig-date = "Date:" date-time CRLF
The origination date specifies the date and time at which the creator
of the message indicated that the message was complete and ready to
enter the mail delivery system. For instance, this might be the time
that a user pushes the "send" or "submit" button in an application
program. In any case, it is specifically not intended to convey the
time that the message is actually transported, but rather the time at
which the human or other creator of the message has put the message
into its final form, ready for transport. (For example, a portable
computer user who is not connected to a network might queue a message
for delivery. The origination date is intended to contain the date
and time that the user queued the message, not the time when the user
connected to the network to send the message.)
If you really want to make sure your email is correct in formatting, I would highly recommend you give the RFC a once-over.
Hope that helps.
| [reply] |
Some MTAs will add a Date field if it doesn't exist, but most won't. Other MTAs (e.g. Exim) will add the Date field if the message is transmitted locally but not when it is transmitted via SMTP. In general the MUA should add a date line, and in this case your script is the MUA. | [reply] |