Posted by Alan J. Flavell on 09/21/06 20:45

On Thu, 21 Sep 2006, richard wrote:

[otiose quotage snipped yet again. Isn't it time you started
following good usenet netiquette?]

> As I've always understood it, the / means another folder or
> directory.

No. URLs (which is what these are) define their own hierarchy, which,
in principle, is completely independent of any server-specific file
system, folders etc. The data might not be stored in ordinary files
at all, but might be in a database, or be generated on-the-fly from
some other source.

In practice you will, of course, often find that the server is
configured so that a certain sub-tree of the server's file hierarchy
is mapped to a corresponding sub-tree of URLs, but this is by no means
fundamental to the web. Quite the contrary, in fact (the URL
hierarchy is not meant to expose internal details of web server file
hierarchies etc.). As long as one misses this distinction, things may
appear to be going just fine for quite a while, but sooner or later
there will be a big surprise.

> A leftover shortcut from DOS.

I think the original designers of the URL scheme would quite resent
your implications.

[Back to original message]