Ending slash in url yielding source doc. display??

[Chuck Bearden]

On Fri, 9 Jan 1998, Sara T. wrote:

> Web4Lib folk:
> 
> Hi.  I would be quite interested in hearing if anyone else has had the
> following problem, and what your solution(s) were.
> 
> Most of our Info. Resources Dept.'s Web pages are on a SUN SPARC Station,
> running SUN OS 5.5.1, and using the CERN http server.
> We JUST upgraded to 5.5.1 right before the holidays.
> The following problem has only occured, to our knowledge, this week.  So,
> the OS looks like the culprit.
> 
> When one types in/uses a bookmark, for the urls for at least two of our
> pages, when the urls have ending slashes (e.g.
> http://fnalpubs.fnal.gov/index.html/) the resulting display on the browser
> is the SOURCE DOCUMENT, i.e. the html-tagged text file.
> This happens using Netscape on the following platforms:  Mac OS, Win NT,
> and UNIX.  But it does not happen ALL the time!
> 
> A UNIX support guy says the end slashes are the problem.  That could well
> be.  But they were never a problem on previous versions of the OS on our
> Sun station.

Whatever the cause may be, your server is sending a document type of 
text/plain rather than text/html in the header of the document when the 
slash is added after the document name.  A browser won't parse and render 
html codes if the doc-type is text/plain.  

I'm not sure how the OS could cause that problem.  

Also, I'm not sure if one is permitted to have a trailing slash after a 
file name in a URL, althought I can't really figure out for sure why not 
from the HTTP rfcs.  

Chuck 
-------------------------------------------------------------
Chuck Bearden			email: cbearden at hpl.lib.tx.us
Network Services Librarian
Automation Department		voice: 713/247-2264
Houston Public Library		fax:   713/247-1182
500 McKinney Ave.
Houston, TX  77002		
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