Re: Another snapshot of the URL document.

Guido.van.Rossum@cwi.nl
Tue, 05 Jul 1994 14:31:39 +0200

Message-Id: <9407051231.AA08351=guido@voorn.cwi.nl>
To: timbl@www0.cern.ch
Subject: Re: Another snapshot of the URL document.
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 05 Jul 1994 12:09:45 MDT."
<9407051009.AA04147@www3.cern.ch>
From: Guido.van.Rossum@cwi.nl
Date: Tue, 05 Jul 1994 14:31:39 +0200

> No -- @ is the same as %40 in all cases. The user and host strings
> may neither contain either.

This contradicts the current draft:

The user name (and password), if present, are followed by a
commercial at-sign "@". Within the user and password field,
any ":", "@", or "/" must be encoded.

How else would I put a '@' in a password?

> what is unsafe about "/"? It is reserved.

It is not in the list of "safe" characters in the document:

safe = "$" | "-" | "_" | "." | "&" | "+"

[...]

(On HTTP):
> It doesn't *have* to have a hierarchical structure. If it does,
> then / is used. I guess I'm quiblling over words but one has to
> to prevent later misunderstanding that http paths are filenames.

Sure. Is the reverse also true (that if / is used there is a
hierarchical structure)? (I guess not, e.g. the map server at Xerox
PARC uses / to separate options but they can be in any order.)

--Guido van Rossum, CWI, Amsterdam <Guido.van.Rossum@cwi.nl>
URL: <http://www.cwi.nl/cwi/people/Guido.van.Rossum.html>