Actually, aliases and script aliases could create problems for you.... take
this example:
Let's say that we had a directory tree on the server like this:
/cgi-bin
/executable
/specialprogram
/specialprogram_source
/some_other_directory
/DocRoot
/subpage_set
/subpage_set2
if we setup aliases on the webserver so that http://www.foo.bar/program was
an alias for /cgi-bin/executable/specialprogram, then we have a situation
where
http://www.foo.bar/program/../some_other_directory
is not equal to
http://www.foo.bar/some_other_directory
in fact, the equivalent would be
http://www.foo.bar/cgi-bin/some_other_directory
(which you wouldn't be able to tell from the URL itself.)
So, even though I don't know *exactly* where you would find that problem, I
know the kind of place you might look: shared cgi spaces on Internet Service
Providers (where script aliasing and aliasing are used to build apparant
congruity of presence.)
-------- REPLY, Original message follows --------
Date: Friday, 17-May-96 02:35 PM
From: Michael De La Rue \ Internet: (mikedlr@indy.unipress.waw.pl)
To: robots@webcrawler.com \ Internet: (robots@webcrawler.com)
Subject: Re: Web spaces of strange topology. Where?
Strange the way these technical mailing lists all go quiet the minute
anyone mentions anything on topic isn't it? ;-) Wonder if I've offended
everyone...
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
but I think I have never seen such a URL. If anyone knows that they don't
exist I'd be interested... if anyone knows where they do exist I'd also be
really interested. If the reason everyone is being quiet is because they've
never seen this, then I'd like to know why Tim Bray (related, I think to one
of the search engines. I've only got a quote in another message handy) said
in a message a while ago (see the list archives) that knowing the real
meaning of /xxxx/./../x/../y/ is a problem.
-------- REPLY, End of original message --------
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