Re: CGI PATH_TRANSLATED variable?

Mike Meyer (mwm@contessa.phone.net)
Thu, 23 Mar 1995 00:05:12 +0500


> Not quite. If you have the serverroot at
> /var/web
> and you have /htdocs and /cgi-bin in the serverroot dir, and you have
> two documents in /htdocs called
> /foo.html and /baz/bar.html
> then a request for /var/web/htdocs/foo.html looks like this
> http://yourserver/foo.html
> and baz/bar.html is
> http://yourserver/baz/bar.html

Yes, but note that this assumes that all your html documents live in
one tree. What if that's not the case? In particular, what if your
server could hand either of /var/web/htdocs/foo.html or
/var/web/htdocs-new/foo.html if someone tryed to GET
http://yourserver/foo.html?

> Running through a gateway at
> http://yourserver/cgi-bin/script
> the request using PATHINFO .html would be
> http://yourserver/cgi-bin/script/foo.html
> PATH_INFO= /foo.html
> PATH_TRANSLATED= /var/web/htdocs/foo.html

Should PATH_TRANSLATED be /var/web/{htdocs,htdocs-new}/foo.html for
the case I've got?

> The advantage is that the server will do user-dir escaping for you, so
> http://yourserver/cgi-bin/script/~baz/bar.html
> PATH_INFO= /~baz/bar.html
> PATH_TRANSLATED= /u/baz/public_html/bar.html

This only applies if your server does user-dir escaping. Mine doesn't
(yet, anyway).

Thanx,
<mike