question about URLs: is http:/dir illegal?

Hello everyone,

Quick question: For a while, I've used quite a lot of link URLs of the form:

http:/a/b/c/d.html

I meant this as a document on the same server as the current document,
hence no //server part, but I (rather unusually) specified that the protocol
was http: to stop Web browsers trying to look it up as file: as well..

Needless to say, this worked fine on all the Web browsers I've ever tried,
and no-one has ever reported any of my links of utterly broken!

Now, through a whole series of events involving a new search engine, we
consulted the RFCs, and they appear to imply that http: MUST be followed
by a //server part.  This is certainly the interpretation that the search
engine uses, and thus it fails to index documents beyond such links!

What do people think?  Is that what the RFCs or any other standards actually
say?  Or mean:-)?  Is it reasonable?  I've gone through removing loads of
http: prefixes from URLs w/o a server part...

I'll be happy to summarise any replies..


	cheers,
	duncan

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Duncan C. White, Senior Computing Officer, Dept of Maths and Computing Science,
                 University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey GU2 5XH, UK.
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Received on Wednesday, 3 September 1997 10:11:16 UTC