Re: uh oh -- halp!

Robert S. Thau (rst@ai.mit.edu)
Wed, 8 Sep 93 17:05:03 EDT


Eric Bina writes ...

> 2) Change HTTP0. As I understand it, an HTTP0 server right now, to
> process an HTTP/1.0 request reads first the command (Usually GET),
> Then the URL. It throws away everything from the URL to CR LF.
> We could modify this slightly to instead throw away eveything up
> to the terminator for HTTP/1.0 (Which
> This would mean upgrading all the current HTTP0 servers and shell
> scripts. It should be an easy update, just change the terminating
> sequence. The biggest headache here is what to do about old HTTP0
> clients. They would hang on the new HTTP0 servers, because they would
> never send the right terminating sequence.

It may be possible to get rid of this headache, by having modified HTTP0
servers look for the blank line as a terminator *only* if the HTTP/1.0
protocol identifier is part of the GET request on the first line. The idea
is that an HTTP0 request:

GET /some/url/or/other[CRLF]

is handled as before, while an HTTP/1.0 request

GET /some/url/or/other HTTP/1.0[CRLF]
More: headers go here[CRLF]
[CRLF][CRLF]

is (properly) slurped up completely before the server starts sending back
data.

Or am I missing something? :-|...

rst