Re: NEW ISSUE: empty Host header

Roy T. Fielding wrote:
> Host is full of baggage imposed by folks who never implemented
> HTTP and had no way of knowing that mandating Host on all messages
> was a complete waste of time (it had already been implemented on
> all browsers).
> 
> We don't need to change the mandate, but we can improve the
> description so that it explains all of the types of possible
> HTTP requests and note the fact that not all URIs have a host
> portion.  The empty Host is for that reason.  I thought that
> this was already on the issues list, but I guess not.
> 
> Note that host in RFC3986 is already defined to allow empty
> (because reg-name can be empty).

Interesting.

So... assuming we replaced RFC2396's host with RCF3986's host, the 
following would become legal:

   Host: :81

Bug or feature?

BR, Julian