Cache Control must > MUST

I suppose this falls under issue "h1" (MUST-MAY-SHOULD):

In section 14.9, the first sentence after the first note says:

Cache directives must be passed through a proxy or gateway...

I think the "must" ought to be "MUST".

Richard L. Gray
will code for chocolate


Referer had no value.  Add a value, or
remove the header altogether, and their server worked okay.

I was all set to go off in high dudgeon about how the specification
*says* that headers that aren't understood should be ignored.  What it
says (7.1 Entity Header Fields) is that "unrecognized header fields
SHOULD be ignored...."

The question I have is, what does "unrecognized" mean?  Does it just
mean a header whose name is unfamiliar, or does it also mean a
recognized header for which the value is in some way invalid (such as
my example above)?  I realize that "be liberal in what you accept" is
on my side, here, but it's not clear that the *letter* of the
specification is also on my side.

Dave Kristol

Received on Tuesday, 26 May 1998 08:52:15 UTC