Re: NULL-Request (Sect. 4.1)

  > It seemed to use like a less obtrusive solution to the problem of
  > existing broken post scripts was to add a general no-op (also somewhat
  > useful for performance measurements) rather than bandaid the post
  > method.  I believe you need to look at this solution in that light.

I like John Franks's implementation, where inter-request CRLF's are
dropped on a persistent connection.  However, I think it will be tricky
to craft words to say that.  And I agree with Phillip Hallam-Baker's
concern that gobbling CRLFs silently violates the request-response
paradigm.  I recognize the possible utility of a null request, but it
would seem to merit a response, which leads to the question, "What kind
of response, when you don't know the protocol version, etc.?"

I'm inclined instead to add a note in 7.2.2 (Entity Body - Length) that
some older client implementations included a superfluous CRLF following
an entity body, and that robust servers should ignore those extra
characters.  (Yes, I recall that that's what we started with before
heading toward the null request "solution".)

  > And I'm glad you're mind is so strange as to find the problems in
  > it as first written.
Gee, thanks!  It's nice to know my warped mind is so appreciated.  :-)

Dave Kristol

Received on Wednesday, 24 April 1996 11:54:22 UTC