Re: comments on RFC 2396 relative URL examples

> The example of resolving a relative URL could be improved.  It uses a
> base of http://a/b/c/d;p?q
>
> Not wanting to read the RFC end to end, it took me a bit of searching to
> find that the ;p part is a "parameter" and the ?q part is a "query". But 
> I
> have no idea what their relevance is to this example.  It they are to be
> ignored when attaching the relative parts, it would be nice to say so.

The examples are intended to identify common bugs or deprecated features
in software.  The role of ";" changed from RFC 1808, so the tests can be
used to differentiate between an 1808-compliant parser and a 2396-compliant
parser, thus identifying places where changes are needed.

> The basic expansion has one very confusing and not explained aspect. The
> relative path g is said to expand to http://a/b/c/g instead of
> http://a/b/c/d/g.  The other expansions are obvious once the "remove d"
> rule is applied.  Would a base of http://a/b/c/d/ plus g expand to
> http://a/b/c/d/g?

Yes, but again the purpose of the tests is to reveal the most common
parser bugs.  Treating a base as a prefix is one of the most common.

> The examples should have enough annotation to
> mostly stand on their own and to reinforce the concepts.

I'd like to expand the tests, particularly with other example base URI,
since there is one errata that would have been discovered that way.
More annotation is welcome.

....Roy

Received on Friday, 17 May 2002 17:46:11 UTC