[jcifs] SMB URL

Christopher R. Hertel crh at ubiqx.mn.org
Wed Jul 10 13:26:29 EST 2002


On Tue, Jul 09, 2002 at 10:40:56PM -0400, Allen, Michael B (RSCH) wrote:
:
:
> > Ouch.  No, you should get
> > 
> >   smb://foo%2Ebar.what.snu.com
> > 
> 	Try it with a web browser. The escapes are taken out. I will read
>       the rest a little later.

The rest is probably better than that bit...

Anyway... I tried that string, and a few other variations, in NetScape.  
I don't trust NetScape to exhibit "normal" behavior, but it didn't do what
you suggested.  When I entered "http://jcifs%2Esamba.org/" it popped up a
message saying:

        Netscape is unable to locate the server jcifs%2Esamba.org

...which, I think is the wrong thing to do.  The escapes should be
translated before the name is passed to the DNS query.

Regarding my example: jcifs%2Esamba.org

The dot character is not reserved in a DNS name (the "host" field), so
there is no reason that it would be escaped.  If it is internally
un-escaped and the re-escaped the dot might reasonably be left alone. If
viewed as DNS names, the strings "jcifs%2Esamba.org" and "jcifs.samba.org"
mean exactly the same thing.

On the other hand,

  "anonymous:crh%40samba.org at us6.samba.org"
and
  "anonymous:crh at samba.org@us6.samba.org"

are parsed differently, which changes semantics as well.

When I entered:

  ftp://anonymous:crh%40samba.org@us6.samba.org/pub/samba/

I got FTP access to us6.samba.org.  That worked correctly and Netscape
continued to show the %40 in the URL string as I moved up and down in the
directory tree.

  [I have to admit, though, that Netscape also accepted

     ftp://anonymous:crh@samba.org@us6.samba.org/pub/samba/

  which is syntactically incorrect.  Two '@'s should not be allowed in the
  authority field.  A credit to Netscape's parsing and "user
  friendliness".]

Which browser did you test with?  I have a selection to play with.  It 
would be interesting to see what happens.

Chris -)-----

--
Samba Team -- http://www.samba.org/     -)-----   Christopher R. Hertel
jCIFS Team -- http://jcifs.samba.org/   -)-----   ubiqx development, uninq.
ubiqx Team -- http://www.ubiqx.org/     -)-----   crh at ubiqx.mn.org
OnLineBook -- http://ubiqx.org/cifs/    -)-----   crh at ubiqx.org




More information about the jcifs mailing list