Re: Decision about Host?

At 3:09 PM 10/5/95, Jeffrey Mogul wrote:
>But then what does it
>mean if a client sends:
>
>        Host: www
>
>To me, this is an error, and the server can report it as such.
>What else could it possibly do?

Since the server will presumably still receive HTTP/1.0 requests without
Host headers, it will need to have a default document root to use in
response to these requests.  So it could:

        1. use a document tree relating to Host if Host exists; and
        2. use a default document tree if Host is not given or is ambiguous.

Sending a Bad Request error because Host is ambiguous seems too strict.
Probably neither the user nor the server maintainer will be able to do
anything about the ambiguity.  If server implementations were inconsistent
about returning this error, the result would be confusion and great
calamity.  Or the like.

M. Hedlund <hedlund@best.com>
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