where is the case of a URL defined? how do I ensure it is mixed case and not all lower case?

Joseph S D Yao jsdy at cospo.osis.gov
Tue Mar 21 16:46:51 UTC 2000


On Mon, Mar 20, 2000 at 11:09:05PM -0500, Alan J Rosenthal wrote:
> Timothy GILL <TimGill at home.com> writes:
> >I manage a web site for a community group, http://ArtsMaplewood.org.  We
> >use an ISP who offered their services for free.  However, it is frustrating
> >to go to the site and see its name shown in my browser window as
> >http://artsmaplewood.org because it is hard to read.
> 
> Either name is valid.  Whatever you type into your web browser should stay
> there.
> 
> If you type a directory name without the trailing slash so that the web
> server sends back a redirect, then it's a question of the configuration of
> the web server how it spells the hostname when it returns the redirection URL.
> But it doesn't typically get this from DNS... at least, Apache doesn't.
> 
> But I don't see any subdirectories in your web pages so this won't come up
> anyway.
> 
> Perhaps you are clicking on some other link which spells it in lower-case.
> 
> Or perhaps you are typing it in in lower case to your web browser and
> expecting it to change.  This doesn't happen.

The host name is case-independent.  Always.  See RFC 1738, which
references RFCs 1034, and 1123, which in turn refer to other RFCs and
have been updated by still other RFCs.  ;-)  So it doesn't matter to
the computer and the network what case they see.

And that is as far as DNS and, possibly, BIND are involved.

But what you see may be affected by the "ServerName" keyword in
conf/httpd.conf in your Apache setup.  Assuming Apache.  Assuming
current version, and that they didn't stick it in one of the other
equivalent .conf files.  ;-}

~apache/conf/httpd.conf:
<VirtualHost 10.X.Y.Z>
...
ServerName	web.YourSiteHere.org
...
</VirtualHost>

-- 
Joe Yao				jsdy at cospo.osis.gov - Joseph S. D. Yao
COSPO/OSIS Computer Support					EMT-B
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