Question on HTTP URLs

John Franks (john@math.nwu.edu)
Wed, 31 Aug 1994 22:00:07 -0500 (CDT)

I am writing an HTTP server and I plan to have it recognize URLs
like the following:

http://host/dir1/dir2;search=wais?query

http://host/dir1/dir2;search=keyword?query

http://host/dir1/dir2;search=title?query

http://host/dir/file;info

These will do various types of searches or in the last case
provide a description of the file generated on the fly.

My question is will the use of the ';' as a delimiter for parameters
cause any conflicts with current or planned usage. According to
the most recent document I can find on the subject the ';' is reserved
(see excerpt below) but there is no indcation of its intended use.
By my reading of this document it is completely legal to have a
';' in my URL if it is URL escaped. But I would like to know
if it can be unescaped as in the examples above.

Here is an excerpt from:
Uniform Resource Locators T. Berners-Lee
draft-ietf-uri-url-06.txt L. Masinter
Expires March 13, 1995 M. McCahill

Begin excerpt
An HTTP URL takes the form:

http://<host>:<port>/<path>?<searchpart>
...

Within the <path> and <searchpart> components, "/", ";", "?" are
reserved. The "/" character may be used within HTTP to designate a
hierarchical structure.

End excerpt

John Franks Dept of Math. Northwestern University
john@math.nwu.edu