Re: CGI suggestion

• Mail folder: WWW Talk Oct 93-present
• Next message: Charles Henrich: "CGI Suggestion"
• Previous message: dolesa@smtp-gw.spawar.navy.mil: "subscribe"
• In-reply-to: ts: "CGI suggestion"
• Reply: Charles Henrich: "CGI Suggestion"
• Reply: ts: "CGI suggestion"

From: john@math.nwu.edu (John Franks)
Message-id: <9312281546.AA04784@hopf.math.nwu.edu>
Subject: Re: CGI suggestion
To: decoux@moulon.inra.fr (ts)
Date: Tue, 28 Dec 1993 09:46:54 -0600 (CST)
Cc: marca@ncsa.uiuc.edu, john@math.nwu.edu, www-talk@nxoc01.cern.ch
In-reply-to: <9312281304.AA16663@moulon.moulon.inra.fr> from "ts" at Dec 28, 93 02:04:03 pm
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4 PL23]
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Length: 2166      

> Marc Andreessen writes:
> > Who is "I" in this context?  If I == the server, then the server's
> > file hierarchy is in fact known.  If I == some user, then it doesn't
> > matter one way or the other, does it (since the URL should be
> > considered opaque anyway)?  I'm probably missing something...
> 

Well the "I" might be a server maintainer who is not fully cognizant
of the details of CGI, and would expect something which looks like
a path to a file to be one.  Such a maintainer may not, in the best
of all possible worlds, really *need* to know what is going on, but
that won't prevent mail to the developers saying "File /cgi-bin/foo1/foo2
is not in the distribution I got; where is it?"

Also is it really clear that no future caching mechanism will ever
need to parse the URL?


> Guy Decoux writes:
>  Actually you can't have a subdirectory under "/cgi-bin". Example :
> 
>  http://server/cgi-bin/subdir/script/extra_path
> 
>  With this URL server, actually, call "subdir" and not "subdir/script"
> 

This is something that was not clear to me from reading the spec.  I
did not realize that the name "cgi-bin" was in any way special. Is,
in fact, "cgi-bin" going to be a reserved word in http URL's?  If so
then my objection about parsing is not well founded.  This is easy
enough to parse -- it will still confuse some people though.  It also
seems like a rather artificial restriction.  Am I correct in my
understanding that this means that any subdirectory of cgi-bin is
inaccessible to a client querying the server?

Could we clarify the CGI spec some more?

1. Is "cgi-bin" a reserved directory name?
2. Can it be anyplace in the directory hierarchy?
3. Can a server have more than one cgi-bin?

and most importantly

4. Is it the case that in any URL containing "cgi-bin" everything
   from the second '/' after "cgi-bin" to the end of the URL is always
   path info, optionally followed by a ? and a query string?


If the answers to questions 1-4 are all "yes", then I will withdraw my 
suggestions. I still think this is a less than optimal syntax, but it
is usable.


John Franks 	Dept of Math. Northwestern University
		john@math.nwu.edu