Re: same URL, different encoding

Dancer wrote:

> url-decode the URL and then URL encode it before using it as a key (for
> storing or matching)? I'd then also set the host-portion of the name all
> lower-case. This wouldn't catch everything, but would catch more,
> methinks.

Have seen servers which depends on certain escaping being used or not
being used (the ~ is a good example. Have seen servers which require it
to not be escaped, and servers which require it to be escaped, usually
caused by a configuration error/misuse). Problem with your approach is
that if a user sends a request with the "wrong" escaping to such a
server then Squid will cache the result and return it on subsequent
request even when "correct" escaping is being used.. And we will
probably see more of such faulty servers as more and more people get
into writing dynamic servers with data sources other than preformatted
HTML in a filesystem..

But on the other hand, if Squid made these errors show up then perhaps
more people learnt to make compliant HTTP applications? Who knows.. For
now I vote for the safe path and tell people to use normalising
redirectors if they are not happy with that.

/Henrik
Received on Wed Jul 14 1999 - 19:52:12 MDT