old bug in 5b6

Aaron Sherman (ajs@openmarket.com)
Wed, 17 Jan 1996 17:04:37 -0500


Just picked up libwww-perl5b6, and I noticed that URI::URL.pm has not
changed since 5b5. I was wondering if either of the bugs that I
reported (escaping/unescaping of queries and the "if $query" problem)
have been fixed in an unreleased version? These problems prevent me
from doing any serious work with the package, which is terribly
unfortunate, since I am happy to provide feedback from the
front-lines.

Just in case people forgot, these test URLs are examples of URLs that
go through the package and come out wrong:

	http://www.com/foo?0
	http://www.com/foo?a%26b&c

The first url comes out of URI::URL as

	http://www/com/foo

The second comes out:

	http://www.com/foo?a&b&c

Both of which are MOST CERTAINLY NOT the same as the original URL. My
comments then were that you could change:

	.... if $query;

and the like into:

	.... if defined($query) && length($query);

Which gets around ?0

Then, you can just skip escaping/unescaping of query-strings, since it
cannot be done safely. There is no canonicalization of a URL with a
query-string, woefully.

			-AJS

--
Aaron Sherman	Shell to DOS...Come in DOS, do you copy? Shell to DOS...
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