Re: HTTP header field sizes

On Thu, 2 Nov 2000, Corey Wineman wrote:

> Is there some specification that describes how long certain HTTP header
> fields should be? I browsed through a couple of the RFCs and saw desciptions
> for the format of fields and which characters were/were not valid, but
> didn't notice anything about length.
> Is there, for example, a suggested limit on the number of characters that
> can be included in the Content-Type: header field?

I don't recall there being any formal limit, although practical issues,
such as input string buffer lengths, on both browsers and servers, place
practical limits on the maximum. For example, IE 4, I believe, has a 1024
byte buffer for reading header fields, which means that URLs in GET
requests can be truncated if they're longer than this.

HOpe this helps --

Ian

Received on Thursday, 2 November 2000 23:38:51 UTC