Re: idempotence of POST

    It *should* be the case that if there are any cache-control headers
    not recognized by a cache, the cache ought to assume the object is not
    cachable.   Now, I don't have enough time right this minute to go find
    out if we remembered to specify that or not.  In any case, if we
    did, then any new controls for this behavior probably should go into
    some new option of cache-control.

Actually, I think the way that the HTTP/1.1 specification now works
is that if you want this behavior for a new directive, you send
	Cache-control: no-cache, new-directive-that-overrides-no-cache
and only the caches that understand the new directive will ignore
the no-cache directive.

The problem, though, is that HTTP/1.0 caches don't recognize
Cache-control, and so nothing we do in the HTTP/1.1 spec will
change the fact that if a server relies on *any* Cache-control
directive to reduce the cachability of GETs, then this won't
work reliably in all cases.

-Jeff

Received on Thursday, 19 September 1996 13:29:05 UTC