Re: Web spaces of strange topology. Where?

J.E. Fritz (fritz@Gems.VCU.EDU)
Fri, 17 May 1996 10:16:45 -0400 (EDT)


On Fri, 17 May 1996, Michael De La Rue wrote:

> My question was approximately if anyone knows of a place where
>
> http://www.foo.com/x/y/../z isn't the same as
> http://www.foo.com/x/z

Netscape servers give a Not Found error for any URL with a /../ or /./
segment (for security reasons). Lynx 2.4 and Netscape 2.01 clients (and
presumably others) process these segments in relative but not absolute
URLs, which I believe is what is supposed to happen according to the RFCs.

> say we had
>
> ftp://sunsite.icm.edu.pl/pub/Linux/ftp.cs.helsinki.fi/index.html
>
> should be such an example
>
> and it referenced
>
> ../../pub3/ (it dosen't of course)
>
> that would be what I was looking for.
>
> It would be impossible _IN PRACTICE_ to consider this URL equal to
>
> ftp://sunsite.icm.edu.pl/pub/pub3/
>
> because it isn't
>
> but I think I have never seen such a URL.

Expect to see lots of them as things like Netscape Gold get more popular.
It goes to great lengths to use relative URLs always -- that way a
directory structure can be moved from the author's computer to a sever
without translating URLs. I doubt if it ever produces a /./ segment, but
it will happily do /../ segments.

-Fritz