lynx-dev Location: redirects and reading data

[brian j pardy]

Try going to http://www.freshmeat.net/ with trace on, preferably on a
slow connection.

The server responds with a 302 and gives a Location: header pointing
to http://freshmeat.net/ -- all well and good, but the server also
sends the entire ~70k index page that is actually on
http://freshmeat.net/.

As Lynx never displays this data, I wonder if it is even worth
maintaining the server connection.  I took a quick look over the spec,
and the only reason I would see that we shouldn't automatically
redirect to the next page is the following:


10.3.3 302 Moved Temporarily

   [...]

   If the 302 status code is received in response to a request other
   than GET or HEAD, the user agent MUST NOT automatically redirect the
   request unless it can be confirmed by the user, since this might
   change the conditions under which the request was issued.

I'm not sure if we are required to load this data -- however, if we are,
we're definitely not doing anything with it.

Does anybody have any reason we shouldn't close the connection after
we've received all of the server's headers and there is a Location:
redirect and we're using a GET or HEAD?  (Other than it being rude, of
course.)

-- 
No one knows what he can do till he tries.
                -- Publilius Syrus

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