Trailing slash in URLs

Fri Sep 13 16:17:59 EDT 1996

I would really recommend to include the trailing slash, no matter
what the designers say - it seems to be "fashionable" to omit it, 
probably it looks better to the non-netter's eye.

> My non-technical understanding of this (and I'd love to know more about 
> exactly why this is..) is that LYNX looks for the "/" at the end of a 
> path name. Most servers are set up to read "jobsmart.org" as 
> "jobsmart.org/index.htm"  LYNX, apparently, cannot. It sees 
> "jobsmart.org" and says "can't find this file."

Lynx never says "can't find this file" (unless you use file:// urls),
it is the SERVER who gives this message. For a better understanding,
look at this little conversation:

------------------------[step 1 - telnet to port 80 on a www server]
ubabiak at mail:/home/ubabiak > telnet www.stbib-koeln.de 80
Trying 194.77.87.66...
Connected to www.stbib-koeln.de.
Escape character is '^]'.
                        [step 2 - request a URL just like a browser would]
GET /2708
                        [setp 3 - this is the SERVERs reply]
Content-length: 158

<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Document Moved</TITLE></HEAD>
<BODY><H1>Document Moved</H1>
This document has moved <A 
HREF="http://www.stbib-koeln.de/2708/">here</A>.<P>
</BODY></HTML>
Connection closed by foreign host.
-------------------------------------------------

See what happened? I requested a url called .../2708 (2708 is a directory
on my server) and the server
replies : "geez, why don't you use .../2708/ instead ?" Clever Browsers
instantly call up the correct url, so you don't notice that actually you
caused 2 file transmissions and 2 server responses. If you use
a current version of lynx, it does that too. If you still get
error messages this is because the now  correct URL /directory/ was mapped
to a non-existent file. Like if the server is configured to send
out welcome.html instead of / and this default file is not there.

> It would have been so much easier to just add the "/" in all our printed 
> materials.

Indeed, and it probably would save some resources on both the network
and the *server*.

Bye,
Ulrich

Ulrich Babiak                         StadtBibliothek Koeln
ubabiak at stbib-koeln.de               postbox at stbib-koeln.de
Webmaster / Netzbetreuung              Josef-Haubrich-Hof 1
                                                50676 Koeln