#532 IESG ballot on draft-ietf-httpbis-p2-semantics-25, reason phrase optional? from Julian Reschke on 2014-01-04 (ietf-http-wg@w3.org from January to March 2014)

From: Julian Reschke <julian.reschke@gmx.de>
Date: Sat, 04 Jan 2014 11:56:10 +0100
To: HTTP Working Group <ietf-http-wg@w3.org>
Message-ID: <52C7E8CA.9070800@gmx.de>

Sean Turner asks:

> s6.1: Is it worth mentioning that the reason-phrase can also be not sent? I think that's elsewhere but it might be worth mentioning again.

AFAIU, the reason phrase is not optional, but it can be empty. Consider 
the ABNF in 
<http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/draft-ietf-httpbis-p1-messaging-25.html#status.line>:

   status-line = HTTP-version SP status-code SP reason-phrase CRLF
   reason-phrase  = *( HTAB / SP / VCHAR / obs-text )

So it wouldn't be unreasonable for a recipient to split on the first two 
SP occurrences (and fail if there is none).

Best regards, Julian

Received on Saturday, 4 January 2014 10:56:41 UTC