Is "www" desirable in web site URL?

[Peter Murray]

On Fri, 13 Sep 1996, Peter Murray wrote:
> I just want to add one comment about the format of your URL.  By the
> standard, there should be a trailing slash at the end of your URL.  Such as:
> 
>   http://www.co.washoe.nv.us/
> 
> or
> 
>   http://co.washoe.nv.us/

Well, I stand corrected...it is not required.  I thought I saw it in an RFC
somewhere, but in two relevant RFCs we see:

 From RFC 1738, "URLs"  (http://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1738.txt):
  Section 3.3 HTTP

  An HTTP URL takes the form:

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

  [...] If neither <path> nor <searchpart> is present, the "/"
  may also be omitted.

 
 From RFC 1945, "HTTP/1.0"  (http://ds.internic.net/rfc/rfc1945.txt)
  Section 3.2.2 http URL
   [...] This section defines the scheme-specific syntax and
   semantics for http URLs.

       http_URL       = "http:" "//" host [ ":" port ] [ abs_path ]

   [...] If the abs_path is not present in the URL, it must be given as "/"
   when used as a Request-URI (Section 5.1.2).

   The canonical form for "http" URLs is obtained by converting any
   UPALPHA characters in host to their LOALPHA equivalent (hostnames are
   case-insensitive), eliding the [ ":" port ] if the port is 80, and
   replacing an empty abs_path with "/".

 
I was perhaps thinking of the "canonical form" of URLs, but in any case it is
clear that the trailing slash when accessing the root of a server is not
required.  Thanks to Erik Jul of OCLC for pointing out my error...


Peter
--
Peter Murray, Library Systems Manager                      pem at po.cwru.edu
Library Information Technologies         http://www.cwru.edu/home/pem.html
Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio            W:216-368-8989