RE: NULL-Request (Sect. 4.1)

I think this is good. This is easier than Jeffs suggestion, which allows
extra LWS in lots of places.

To effect this:
Change the first line of the definition of Full_Request in section 4.1
(Message Types) and section 5 (why are they duplicated?) from
>	Full-Request = Request-Line
>to
>	Full-Request = *( CRLF ) Request-Line

Paul
>----------
>From: 	rst@ai.mit.edu[SMTP:rst@ai.mit.edu]
>Sent: 	Wednesday, April 24, 1996 1:00 PM
>To: 	dmk@allegra.att.com; jg@w3.org
>Cc: 	http-wg%cuckoo.hpl.hp.com@hplb.hpl.hp.com
>Subject: 	Re: NULL-Request (Sect. 4.1)
>
>[ Warning --- half-baked idea follows ]
>
>Perhaps the spurious CRLFs following Netscape POST transactions would
>be easier to deal with if they were viewed as being appended to the
>beginning of the request following the POST rather than being appended
>to the end of the POST itself.  That is, we could declare that in
>connections where HTTP/1.0 keep-alive back compatibility is desired,
>servers should allow a request-line to be *preceded* by an arbitrary
>amount of spurious white-space, including CRLF combinations, which
>they should simply ignore.
>
>I'm starting from the --- hopefully non-bogus --- theory that the
>CRLFs are in the stream no matter what, that we want the servers to
>ignore them, and the problem is coming up with a way of saying that
>without messing up the rest of the document.  Unfortunately, the two
>suggestions floated so far do complicate the document a bit ---
>calling them "null requests" creates an exception to every rule
>elsewhere which "all requests" should follow, while considering them
>to be an addendum to the POST-request itself messes up the semantics
>of Content-length.
>
>The hope here, then, is that less of the document depends on the
>syntax of request-lines then on these other things, and so sweeping
>these CRLFs under that part of the rug, rather than another, results
>in a somewhat less unsightly bulge.  However, there may very well be a
>dependance in the document that I've missed....
>
>[ End half-baked idea. ]
>
>rst
>
>
>
>

Received on Wednesday, 24 April 1996 13:50:25 UTC