Re: Invalid URLs.

On Fri, Jun 25, 2004 at 02:30:54PM +0200, ROSSEL Olivier (CIMPA) wrote:
>    On sqwebmail from Debian Sarge:

What version of sqwebmail is that? Not all of us have a Debian box in front
of us.

>    [1]http://mysite/cgi-bin/sqwebmail/login/knoppix.authdaemon/B8F4914528
>    615600F0D25DBEB3FCE72A/1088093566?&form=folder&folder=INBOX
...
>    And the above URL is typically an illegal URL:
>    the argument list is not supposed to begin with a &.

The specification for a URL is in RFC1738, where it says:

   An HTTP URL takes the form:

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

It says that <searchpart> cannot contain / ; or ?, but places no further
restriction in the text. It also gives a formal syntax:

httpurl        = "http://" hostport [ "/" hpath [ "?" search ]]
...
search         = *[ uchar | ";" | ":" | "@" | "&" | "=" ]

Nowhere does it say that the first character of a search expression may not
be "&".

RFC1738 is updated by RFCs 1808, 2368, 2396 but I don't see anything in
there which contradicts this. RFC1808 specifically refers back to RFC1738
for the syntax of a query string.

>    It is ok for Apache. But not for Pound: it returns a 501 error
>    and insults me.

Then Pound is at fault. I don't know anything about this software, but I
suggest you contact the author or vendor and request that it be fixed.

Regards,

Brian.