RE: Expires and 'non-cacheable'

> From: Nottingham, Mark (Australia)

> In 14.9.3,
> [...]
> Many HTTP/1.0 cache implementations will treat an Expires value
> that is less
> than or equal to the response Date value as being equivalent to the
> Cache-Control response directive 'no-cache'. If an HTTP/1.1 cache receives
> such a response, and the response does not include a Cache-Control header
> field, it SHOULD consider the response to be non-cacheable in order to
> retain compatibility with HTTP/1.0 servers.
>
> Would it be safe to assume 'non-cacheable' can be interpreted as 'stale'
> here? (everything else says it is)

I usually use 'stale' to mean something that it was ok to cache for some
amount of time, but that time has passed, so it is no longer ok to use the
cached copy.  'non-cacheable' means that it should not get into the cache at
all.

Received on Wednesday, 21 July 1999 04:02:56 UTC