[9311] in www-talk@info.cern.ch
Re: Form-based File Upload in HTML
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Larry Masinter)
Sat Nov 18 18:37:51 1995
To: www-talk@w3.org
In-Reply-To: "M. Hedlund"'s message of Fri, 17 Nov 1995 16:27:33 -0800 <Pine.SGI.3.91.951117162045.1651A-100000@shellx.best.com>
From: Larry Masinter <masinter@parc.xerox.com>
Date: Sat, 18 Nov 1995 15:34:38 PST
Resent-From: www-talk@w3.org
> ... a number of developers have mentioned that it would be easier to
> process uploaded files if each file was given a content-length part
> header. I know it's late in the game, but I thought it worth mentioning.
This was an option in the original proposal, but was (vigorously)
debated and ultimately removed, because
* the boundary is a reliable indicator of the extent of the file data
* if both content-length and boundary are present, you have to check
the boundary anyway.
* in some situations computing the content-length is difficult
(although necessary for HTTP POST in some situations).
That is, while developers might think it would be easier with explicit
content-length parts, they're wrong.
The RFC should probably have said this explicitly.
