some questions and notes on HTTP/1.1 rev 6

Hello,

I have some comments and questions on the revision 6 of HTTP 1.1.

1) section 3.2.3 URI comparison
  This chapters refers to "reserved" and "unsafe", both of them are neither
  defined in the draft nor are they "imported" explicitly from some RFC.
  The "(see section 3.2)" doesn't help very much here, since we 
  are in 3.2 already.
  The definition of "reserved" in RFC 2396 differs from the one in RFC 2068,
  because it contains additional characters: "$" and "," which are
  considered "safe" rsp. "extra" in RFC 2068. 

2) Is "Trailer" not a hop-by-hop header (it is not mentioned in 13.5.1)?

3) section 14.9 Cache Control
  Definition of "cache-response-directive":
    "max-age" in requests is not defined in 14.9.4 like it has been stated
	in the comment. It is only being described within the first paragraph of
	14.9.3 without any indentation.

4) section  2.1, definition of implied LWS.
  I have some problems when I try to apply this to the byte ranges in 
  section 14.35.1 (Range)

       ranges-specifier = byte-ranges-specifier
	   byte-ranges-specifier = bytes-unit "=" byte-range-set
	   byte-range-set  = 1#( byte-range-spec | suffix-byte-range-spec )
       byte-range-spec = first-byte-pos "-" [last-byte-pos]
	   first-byte-pos  = 1*DIGIT
	   last-byte-pos   = 1*DIGIT

  and section 3.12 Range units
  
       range-unit       = bytes-unit | other-range-unit
	   bytes-unit       = "bytes"
	   other-range-unit = token

  My question is: may I write "bytes =" in a Range header field?
  According 2.1 implied LWS is only allowed between words (token or
  quoted-string), or words and separators. 
  "bytes" is none of them, it is only a literal that
  accidentally matches the token definition. And "=" is not a separator, for
  the same reason. Sounds silly, doesn't it? But can I assume that
  any literal that matches a token (or separator) may be treated as such?
  This would allow to insert LWS between the header name and the ":" as
  well, like "Range : bytes = 99-100". Maybe section 4.2 solves this, but
  the use of a LWS in that place isn't prohibited there explicitely.
  
  I'm asking this, because Apache requires "bytes=" without any LWS, but I am
  not sure whether this is a bug. So I would like to ask here before reporting
  it.
    
Thanks in advance,

Jacob
-- 
                                             Jacob Schroeder
                                             Dipl. Informatiker
                                             eMail: jacob.schroeder@gmx.de

Received on Wednesday, 17 February 1999 14:14:56 UTC