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Ask HN: Why does a url use ://?

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Re: Ask HN: Why does a url use ://?

#21

Post by blasdel »

jacquesm wrote: post #13
DXL wrote: post #12

Tim Berners Lee, the creator of the Web and of URLs, wrote some time ago that he regretted the double slash in URLs, saying that one would suffice.

It went a little further than that, I think the scheme would have been: http:/com/ycombinator/news/item?id=796434

And that would have wrapped DNS and HTTP together in a very uncomfortable way -- you'd have to make at least one extra DNS query for every HTTP request to disambiguate.

People would just end up using a different separator after the DNS part, and you'd be back where you started (just with big-endian domain names).

Re: Ask HN: Why does a url use ://?

#22

Post by jacquesm »

blasdel wrote: post #21
jacquesm wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It went a little further than that, I think the scheme would have been: http:/com/ycombinator/news/item?id=796434

And that would have wrapped DNS and HTTP together in a very uncomfortable way -- you'd have to make at least one extra DNS query for every HTTP request to disambiguate. People would just end up using a different separator after the DNS part, and you'd be back where you started (just with big-endian domain names).

Yes, that's exactly what I would have expected to happen, with the // as a prime candidate for that separator.

Big-endian domain names would have been very nice to have though, if only because it would have been a lot more orderly than the current jumble.

Big-endian for the 'major' components and the path name, little-endian for the host portion seems a bit weird.

mail:/com/domain/hostname//username

Would look strange though...

Re: Ask HN: Why does a url use ://?

#23

Post by alain94040 »

rwmj wrote: post #20
jacquesm wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but there would be a couple of problems as well, specifically the DNS would need some major revamping. The DNS was already operational long before the web came along and it already used the '.' notation. http:/com/test/www/someresource and http:/uk/co/test/www/someresource Would have both been valid resources but it would be harder than now to figure out where the machine boundary is located. You can't go by 'co…

Heh, when _I_ first started using the internet, domain names in the UK were "backwards". My first email address was: rwj@uk.ac.dl.cxa In fact the first "domain names" I used were things like "lancs.pdsoft" but I think those were X.25 names, and the less said about X.25 the better. At some point around '91 or '92 JANET reversed all the domain names to bring it into line with IETF standards. This caused some confusion…

With UUCP, we used to put machine names in the order they were needed for routing, so in effect it was backward compared to today.

Re: Ask HN: Why does a url use ://?

#26

Post by TeHCrAzY »

I_got_fifty wrote: post #25
mikeytown2 wrote: post #24

Kinda wondering, but doesn't a question like this belong on stack overflow?

Possibly. But these are the cool questions that make Hacker News Hacker News and not Digg.

I think its the answers, more than the questions, are what makes Hacker News.
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