Re: What is Content-Length?

On Fri, 12 Dec 1997, Jeffrey Mogul wrote:

> 
> a server could send
> 
> 	HTTP/1.1 200 OK
> 	Date: Thu, 11 Dec 1997 20:33:51 GMT
> 	Transfer-Encoding: compress, chunked
> 	
> 	3039
> 	... compressed data ...
> 	0
> 

This raises the whole issue of stacked transfer encodings.  
Are you suggesting that arbitrary stackings be allowed, or
just two, the second of which is chunked?  This would need to
be clarified.  But generally, at first glance I don't see any
problems.

> When Paul writes:
>     Under these rules, Content-Length is still logically end-to-end --
>     the header may not physically be present, but its value if it is
>     ever present is well-defined end-to-end and the same end-to-end.
> I'm not sure it makes sense to talk about a header being "end-to-end"
> if it isn't actually transmitted on some hops.

What I would most like to see is the assertion that if a Content-length
header is present its value is the length of the entity-body.  It
may not be too important that it be officially end-to-end.

John Franks
john@math.nwu.edu

Received on Friday, 12 December 1997 15:45:39 UTC