SUMMARY: URL specification: referring to the current directory.

Hi,

To summarise the replies I have had to my question about making use of an
HTTP servers "default file" for a directory:

Firstly, it is clear that if a site makes use of this feature, where
"http://www.foo.com/bar/" is the same file as 
"http://www.foo.com/bar/index.html" then it is worth making some effort to
avoid having the page referenced as both.  By having two distinct URLs
pointing to the same page, no cache, proxy or spider (automatic indexing
program) is allowed to make the assumption that they are the same, and so
will store, forward or index what is in reality the same page twice.

Similarly, by missing the trailing slash ie "http://www.foo.com/bar" you
are introducing a third distinct URL for the same page, but the way of
dealing with this is well defined.

To answer the specific question I asked, in a page such as
"http://www.foo.com/bar/page.html", the correct reference to use to point
back to the default page I named is <A HREF="./">this</A>, taking you to
"http://www.foo.com/bar/"

Glen

==============================================================
Glen Monks, UKOLN, http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/~lisgm/ 01225-826450

Received on Wednesday, 17 September 1997 16:28:53 UTC