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Re: Ampersands in the HTTP Header

From: Ville Skyttä <ville.skytta@iki.fi>
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2005 09:24:45 +0200
To: Richard Neill <rn214@hermes.cam.ac.uk>
Cc: www-validator@w3.org
Message-Id: <1109316285.15854.67.camel@bobcat.mine.nu> 

On Fri, 2005-02-25 at 03:47 +0000, Richard Neill wrote:
> Olivier Thereaux wrote:

> > Checking HTTP compliance is a good idea, but it's completely out of the
> > scope of the markup validator.
>
> Yes, that is what I was suggesting. The reason for this, is that the 
> validator lays such great stress on the importance of using '&amp;'
> instead of '&' in links, and so it only seems natural to do so in an 
> HTTP header (which is after all, "just a form of link").
> 
> I agree that it's out of scope, but it would be really useful, and this 
> must be a common error.

Alas, it could not usually be flagged as an error by an "HTTP compliance
checker" either.  I don't think there's anything wrong in general with
placing constructs like "&amp;" in certain parts of URIs, which is what
these HTTP header values are.  For example query strings.  The
probability of an error is relatively high though, but issuing a warning
(or issuing nothing at all) is the best thing such a checker could do.
Received on Friday, 25 February 2005 07:24:48 GMT

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