- From: Jim Gettys <jg@pa.dec.com>
- Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1998 11:15:25 -0800
- To: Ross Patterson <RossP@ss1.reston.vmd.sterling.com>
- Cc: http-wg@hplb.hpl.hp.com
> In section 4.2 "Message Headers", the statement > > "It MUST be possible to combine the multiple header fields into > one "field-name: field-value" pair, without changing the semantics > of the message, by appending each subsequent field-value to the > first, each separated by a comma." > > is a restatement of the preceding requirement, > > "Multiple message-header fields with the same field-name MAY be > present in a message if and only if the entire field-value for > that header field is defined as a comma-separated list [i.e., > #(values)]." > > placing a requirement upon future extensions to the protocol rather than > on implementations of HTTP 1.1. I think the "MUST" should be changed to > a "must". > No, in fact, it is a requirement placed on future versions of the HTTP/1.X family of protocols. The issue is that there are deployed proxies that do exactly this kind of header transformation, and the requirement is to prevent breaking them. We might wish this isn't so, but it is, and for this generation of protocol, we're stuck with it. - Jim
Received on Tuesday, 10 November 1998 11:17:57 UTC