Re: HTTP HEAD request

Jim Hurley (hurleyj@arachnaut.org)
Thu, 6 Apr 1995 19:34:22 +0500

>Currently, the server doesn't need to parse the document at all.
>This would be the first such case. (systems with server-side includes already
>do some parsing, though).

True, but the parse is pretty easy, and it can stop when it reaches
<BODY>. This type of request would not be used very often, only
for indexing tools, existence checks, robots, etc.

>What should it do for a document without a HEAD?

This could happen for non-html fetches, of course.
It should return an error - my first impulse, not having thought
about it much.

Similarly, I guess it should return an error if it got EOF before
</HEAD>. Either that, or it might be probably easier to just send
the whole document part after <HEAD> til EOF, assuming it is scanning
for <HEAD>, then just outputing chars until </HEAD>.

-- 
Jim Hurley           email: hurleyj@arachnaut.org
<URL: http://www.webcom.com/%7Ehurleyj/home.html>