*** draft-fielding-url-syntax-05.txt	Wed May  7 19:51:19 1997
--- draft-fielding-url-syntax-06.txt	Thu Jul 31 17:13:08 1997
***************
*** 1,8 ****
- 
  Network Working Group                            T. Berners-Lee, MIT/LCS
  INTERNET-DRAFT                                 R. Fielding,  U.C. Irvine
! draft-fielding-url-syntax-05              L. Masinter, Xerox Corporation
! Expires six months after publication date                    May 2, 1997
  
      Uniform Resource Locators (URL): Generic Syntax and Semantics
  
--- 1,7 ----
  Network Working Group                            T. Berners-Lee, MIT/LCS
  INTERNET-DRAFT                                 R. Fielding,  U.C. Irvine
! draft-fielding-url-syntax-06              L. Masinter, Xerox Corporation
! Expires six months after publication date                  July 30, 1997
  
      Uniform Resource Locators (URL): Generic Syntax and Semantics
  
***************
*** 891,902 ****
           is a complete path segment not equal to "..", that
           "<segment>/.." is removed.
  
!       h) If the buffer string contains a question-mark "?" character,
           then the reference URL's query component is the substring after
           the first (left-most) question-mark.  Otherwise, the reference
           URL's query component is set undefined.
  
!       i) The reference URL's new path component is the buffer string up
           to, but not including, the first question-mark character or the
           end of the buffer string.
  
--- 890,909 ----
           is a complete path segment not equal to "..", that
           "<segment>/.." is removed.
  
!       h) If the resulting buffer string still begins with one or more
!          complete path segments of "..", then the reference is
!          considered to be in error.  Implementations may handle this
!          error by retaining these components in the resolved path
!          (i.e., treating them as part of the final URL), by removing
!          them from the resolved path (i.e., discarding relative levels
!          above the root), or by avoiding traversal of the reference.
! 
!       i) If the buffer string contains a question-mark "?" character,
           then the reference URL's query component is the substring after
           the first (left-most) question-mark.  Otherwise, the reference
           URL's query component is set undefined.
  
!       j) The reference URL's new path component is the buffer string up
           to, but not including, the first question-mark character or the
           end of the buffer string.
  
***************
*** 1267,1272 ****
--- 1274,1296 ----
        g#s/./x       =  http://a/b/c/g#s/./x
        g#s/../x      =  http://a/b/c/g#s/../x
  
+    Note that within a relative URL, "?", ";", and "#" that are not
+    leading characters are not interpreted with their reserved meaning;
+    in some cases, this results in illegal URLs.
+ 
+    While the rules for resolving partial/relative URLs since the have
+    been such that if relative symbolic elements end up at the
+    beginning of paths they should be retained,
+ 
+       /../s/x      =  http://a/../s/x
+ 
+    in practice, most parsers will strip lead relative symbolic
+    elements in the destination URL, such that
+ 
+      /../s/x       = http://a/s/x   
+ 
+    Because of the ambiguity, such relative forms should be avoided.
+    
     Some parsers allow the scheme name to be present in a relative URL
     if it is the same as the base URL scheme.  This is considered to be
     a loophole in prior specifications of partial URLs [RFC1630]. Its
***************
*** 1350,1356 ****
     that the hyphen may or may not actually be part of the URL.
  
     Using <> angle brackets around each URL is especially recommended
- 
     as a delimiting style for URLs that contain whitespace.
  
     The prefix "URL:" (with or without a trailing space) was
--- 1374,1379 ----
***************
*** 1488,1493 ****
     append the reference's query component to a relative path before
     merging it with the base path.  The resolution algorithm has been
     changed accordingly.
- 
- 
  
--- 1511,1514 ----