[Edwin Goei]
> Shane Curcuru wrote:
> >
> > Brief rules:
> > -- the file: scheme, when referring to a file on the local machine
> > (i.e. you don't really care about the host) will always start with
> > "file:///", and then with an absolute path as defined by the local
> > environment. I'm trying to figure out what this means for UNIX
> > systems, which would seem to have abs paths of "/usr/foo", which means
> > a URL thereon would be "file:////usr/foo", which seems to choke a lot
> > of programs.
>
> Hmmm, 4 slashes... I would expect that for unix systems, where there is
> no drive letter, a file "/usr/foo" would be referred to as
> "file:///usr/foo". Three (3) slashes, instead of 4.
>
This can be a very tricky subject since there are ambiguities in the rfc.
But four slashes are not the way. The scheme is denoted by "file:" . Then
comes the server, denoted by "//servername". Then comes the root path,
which is a single slash in unix, followed by the rest of the path.
Three slashes in a row mean a blank server name. This is taken to mean
"localhost", so these two are supposed to indicate the same thing:
1) file:///
2) file://localhost/
You never need a fourth slash because the third already indicates the root.
There's no problem or ambiguity for a unix system, but on windows you have
two problems: do you use forward or backslashes, and what to use for the
root of the file system. Is it "d:" or /"d:"?
Often a program will accept a file: url without the two leading slashes (or
even without all three)and treat it just like "file:///", although strictly
speaking this isn't correct.
Any other behavior is either an error or an attempt to make the code more
error-tolerant by handling common (mistaken) usages.
Cheers,
Tom P
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