- From: Larry Masinter <masinter@parc.xerox.com>
- Date: Thu, 18 May 1995 18:35:18 PDT
- To: http-wg%cuckoo.hpl.hp.com@hplb.hpl.hp.com
RFC 1738 says that ? is restricted for search, and that ';' is
'reserved' (meaning that URL-encoding it might give different results
than not-URL-encoding it).
If your server has a file with characters that are otherwise reserved,
you have to URL encode them. So if you have a file with a ? in its
name, you have to URL-encode the ? so that ? can be used for its
standard meaning.
In addition, the relative URL draft (which has been sent off to 'last
call', I believe) treats ? differently in the handling of relative
URLs. This might be moot from HTML files (since one wouldn't use byte
ranges of HTML documents, would one?) but is probably relevant for
PDF. That is, a 'HREF="../foo.html"' within a PDF document would want
to strip the byterange from the base, would it not?
================================================================
3.3. HTTP
The HTTP URL scheme is used to designate Internet resources
accessible using HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol).
The HTTP protocol is specified elsewhere. This specification only
describes the syntax of HTTP URLs.
An HTTP URL takes the form:
http://<host>:<port>/<path>?<searchpart>
where <host> and <port> are as described in Section 3.1. If :<port>
is omitted, the port defaults to 80. No user name or password is
allowed. <path> is an HTTP selector, and <searchpart> is a query
string. The <path> is optional, as is the <searchpart> and its
preceding "?". If neither <path> nor <searchpart> is present, the "/"
may also be omitted.
Within the <path> and <searchpart> components, "/", ";", "?" are
reserved. The "/" character may be used within HTTP to designate a
hierarchical structure.
================================================================
Received on Thursday, 18 May 1995 18:36:44 UTC