Re: Ampersands + "Last modified:" Malfunctions

On 12:39 PM 6/3/00 "Alan C. Baird" <ia@apc.net> wrote:

> > To avoid problems with both validators and browsers, always use 
> > &amp; in place of &:
> >
> > <a href="foo.cgi?chapter=1&amp;section=2">...</a>
> 
> However, many CGI engines will not accept &amp; - and rather than 
> forcing all those webmasters out there to stop programming in the 
> commonly-accepted fashion, why not change the validator to accept 
> ampersands, when they're embedded in anchor tags?  Half my pages 
> won't validate correctly, because I've linked to CGI sites which 
> operate only with ampersands.  It seems like we've got the cart 
> before the horse, here.  ;-)

The CGI engine *does not* have to accept &amp;  It should never see it. 
The user-agent, the browser, should decode all the entities in the
attribute value before sending the HTTP request.  If it is not doing so,
then it is broken.

-- 
Jim Correia                                Bare Bones Software, Inc.
correia@barebones.com                     <http://web.barebones.com>

Received on Tuesday, 20 June 2000 15:17:46 UTC