HTTP HEAD request

Jim Hurley (hurleyj@arachnaut.org)
Thu, 6 Apr 1995 13:04:38 +0500

I imagined the HTTP HEAD request would return the <HEAD> </HEAD>
section of an HTML doc. However reading the spec reveals it doesn't
and a simple trial also reveals the truth:
-------------------------
%telnet www-dev 80
Trying 139.122.200.88 ...
Connected to heron.
Escape character is '^]'.
HEAD / /HTTP/1.0

HTTP/1.0 200 OK
Date: Thursday, 06-Apr-95 16:16:11 GMT
Server: NCSA/1.3
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: text/html
Last-modified: Wednesday, 05-Apr-95 19:25:36 GMT
Content-length: 2882

Connection closed by foreign host.

-------------------------

So my question is - is there any way for a robot, etc. to just get
the HEAD section (or TITLE)?

If not, it would seem like a Good Thing to add such a request to the
HTTP spec.

This probably isn't the correct mailing list for this, but it's more
relevant that a lot of what comes by these days.

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