Status line in HTTP header with Apache

We are working with apache as a reverse proxy, to access an internal host.

When we access certain CGI, the proxy is adding an additional header(status
line). The consequences are  that the browser displays a first line with :

HTTP/1.0 200 OK date Server: 1.0  Content-type: text/html Content-length:
8567

In fact the browser receives two headers, and uses  the first one. This is
not really nice for text, but disastrous for images, since they cannot be
displayed.

After a long troubleshooting session, we found out that the reason is that
our application is sending back a status header with two spaces instead of
just one. The normal syntax is :

HTTP/1.0 SP 200 SP OK

with SP: Space character (20hex)

and what our application delivers is

HTTP/1.0 SP SP 200 SP OK

Once we removed the additional space, the proxy worked correctly.
IE and Netscape are accepting the two SP as if just one was present. So is
this a bug or the normal way for a proxy to work ?

TIA for your advice
                                    ChA


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Christian ALT                                 go to security alert:
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Telecom and Logistics Associates
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