Common Log format

• From: Paul Phillips <paulp@cerf.net>
• Date: Wed, 12 Apr 1995 14:52:59 -0700 (PDT)
• To: www-talk@www10.w3.org
• Message-Id: <Pine.SUN.3.91.950412144527.6881B-100000@nic.cerf.net>

I have a serious problem with the Common Logfile format, as presented at 
<URL:http://w3.org/hypertext/WWW/Daemon/User/Config/Logging.html#
common-logfile-format>.  It indicates that the "request" portion of the 
log entry should be:

  The request line exactly as it came from the client.

Unfortunately with directory indexing, this means that three different 
requests all have the same semantic meaning:

  GET /dirname
  GET /dirname/
  GET /dirname/index.html

(Assuming that index.html is the dir index file, this too can vary.) Are 
the current logfile processing programs taking this vagarity into 
account? I intend to log

  GET /dirname/index.html

in all cases where index.html existed, and
  
  GET /dirname/

in all cases where it doesn't, unless somebody can provide me with a 
really good reason not to.  One of the features of the server I am 
writing will be reliable logging, so this is a little more important than 
it might sound.

Comments?

 -PSP

Received on Wednesday, 12 April 1995 17:53:03 UTC