Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

pWhoIs Results & Output Related

Question: What date/time format does the "Cache-Date" attribute represent in pWhoIs output?

• The Cache-Date attribute represents the number of seconds that had passed since the Epoch at the moment the responding pWhoIs server's route cache was last updated/refreshed. Most systems with the 'date' utility can simply type 'date -r <seconds>' to convert this timestamp into a human-readable format. Alternatively, you may change output types to 'type=rpsl' to see the RPSL-compliant date format, which only supports temporal precision to the most recent twenty-four hour period (day).

Question: Are key:value pairs guaranteed show up in the same order each time?

• No. The order in which key:value data appear is not guaranteed to be identical from query to query. Parsers should match on the key, not on the line-offset. Differences show up because of version differences in prefix whois servers, differences in servers' data sets, and for future growth.