No trailing slash in URL

[Carole Leita]

When I clicked on a link from a Yahoo page this evening I got back the
following message from the server it went to. I started teaching about
this in the last HTML workshop I gave, but this is the first time I've 
seen server administrators try to get people to write better URL's. Have 
you looked at your URL's lately? ;)
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>From the link: http://www.fwi.uva.nl/~heederik/zappa
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The directory you specified /~heederik/zappa was not followed by a ``/''

You asked our server for a URL that matched a directory here, but which
does not end in a slash (``/''). Many servers handle this case by telling
your client to retry the request with a URL that has a slash at the end.
However, this has bad performance effects on our server, and we would
rather display this message so that you, the user, can edit your ``hot
list'' such that the URLs you use to reach us always have trailing slashes
unless they are explicit files. 

If this seems like a horrible kludge, we agree, and we suggest that you
take your complaint up with the HTTP protocol designers. You can send us
mail if you wish, but be warned that we are relatively set in our ways on
this topic. 

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Carole Leita, leita at netcom.com
Internet/Reference Librarian, 510-644-6100 ext.313
Berkeley Public Library, 2090 Kittredge St., Berkeley CA 94703
URL: http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/bpl/
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