Re: More followups

> 1. In a HEAD response, what should Content-Length be set to?  The
>    length of the (non-existent) object body, or 0?

The length of the object-body that would have been returned had
the request been a GET.

> 2. Is there a view on how locally-time-stamped data should have their
>    Last-Modified GMT computed?  It's impractical to recreate the
>    true original GMT time-stamp (as the timezone and daylight savings
>    regime of the place of last modification is usually unknown).  Using
>    the current GMT offset will result in the timestamp of some data
>    jumping forwards or backwards an hour, twice a year, which could
>    affect caching.

There are many views as to how this should be done, but none of them
are within the realm of the HTTP protocol.  All that matters is that
the date used within the protocol is GMT (UT).  How the date is obtained
(and, in fact, what it means to be "modified") is entirely up to the
application sending the object.


......Roy Fielding   ICS Grad Student, University of California, Irvine  USA
                                     <fielding@ics.uci.edu>
                     <URL:http://www.ics.uci.edu/dir/grad/Software/fielding>

Received on Monday, 5 December 1994 15:01:46 UTC