(unknown charset) Re: Case sensitive names and authoring

I'll backtrack from my statement just a bit... :-) Tim Ellison sent me an
off-list email saying that Apache 1.3.6 and mod_dav 0.9.15 on WinNT 4.0
SP5 *does* case-fold on a PUT.

I just tracked this down. While mod_dav doesn't do the case-folding,
Apache *does*. Thus, when mod_dav gets to the filename, it has been munged
to the lower-cased form.

[ specifically: http_request.c, line 401 in the CVS version ]

IMO, I call this a bug in Apache. The protocol and behaviors should be
case-sensitive. I'm not sure how/when Apache will be fixed, but we'll look
into it.

Cheers,
-g

On Fri, 3 Mar 2000 jamsden@us.ibm.com wrote:
> Greg,
> This is great. I didn't have an HTTP spec in front of me when I wrote the
> note (need to get one by the bed I guess). We're probably running into the
> MSFT problem. Maybe this doesn't happen on Windows2000 which seems to leave
> you file names alone a little better. I'll investigate.

Greg Stein wrote:
> On Thu, 2 Mar 2000 jamsden@us.ibm.com wrote:
> >
> > HTTP URLs aren't case sensitive,
> 
> RFC 2616, S3.2.3 states "When comparing two URIs to decide if they match
> or not, a client SHOULD use a case-sensitive octet-by-octet comparison of
> the entire URIs, with these exceptions: ..."
> 
> In other words: they *are* case-sensitive.
> 
> Apache certainly treats them that way. Try these two URLs:
> 
>   http://www.webdav.org/other/proxy.html
>  http://www.webdav.org/other/Proxy.html
> 
> You'll find the latter fails.
> 
> Note that HTTP servers running on an MSFT platform typically treat URLs in
> a case-insensitive fashion (due to the filesystem being insensitive).
> 
> > but some resources are. For example, Java
> > source managed by a WebDAV server must retain the case in the package and
> > class names or the code won't compile. mod_dav foldes all resource names
> to
> > lower case, so .java files on the server won't compile.
> 
> WHAT?!!  mod_dav does NOT do any case-folding. Euh... what made you think
> it does?
> 
> > It seems that WebDAV could, like HTTP, be case insensitive while at the
> > same time require that the server retain the case of resource URLs. That
> > is, the URL segments in the bindings would retain the case in the target
> > when it was entered, but access to those resources would be case
> > insensitive. If this is not the case, WebDAV can't be used to store Java.
> > That would be a real bummer!
> >
> > Would the proposal above be acceptable, and in the spirit of HTTP?
> 
> No and no.  (IMO)
> 
> I certainly do not want to take the performance hit to start doing
> case-insensitive work in mod_dav and Apache. I am in great favor of
> continuing to operate in a case-sensitive fashion, and I believe the
> relevant RFCs encourage that, too.
> 
> Cheers,
> -g

-- 
Greg Stein, http://www.lyra.org/

Received on Friday, 3 March 2000 16:17:05 UTC