comparisons of URIs by caches

A few weeks ago, we had a discussion about what caches should do
when comparing two URIs, to see if they were "identical".  This
is the best set of rules that I've been able to come up with.
Comments received by me in the next 18 hours or so might make into
Monday's I-D.

   A cache, when comparing two URIs to decide if they match or not, a
   cache MUST use a case-sensitive octet-by-octet comparison of the
   entire URIs, with these exceptions:

      - Following the rules from section 3.2.2:

           * A port that is empty or not given is equivalent to
             port 80.

           * Comparisons of host names MUST be case-insensitive.

           * An empty abs_path is equivalent to an abs_path 0f "/"

      - Characters except ``?'', ``;'', ``/'' and ``#'' are
        equivalent to their ``"%" HEX HEX'' encodings.

   For example, the following three URIs are equivalent:

      http://abc.com:80/~smith/home.html
      http://ABC.com/%7Esmith/home.html
      http://ABC.com:/%7esmith/home.html

-Jeff

Received on Thursday, 18 April 1996 22:43:51 UTC