I have created a patch, semicolons.in.uris for AOLserver at
http://www.theashergroup.com/download
to support HTML4.0 specification Appendix B.2.2, regarding
special characters in URL attribute values, specifically using a
semicolon, ';', in a URI instead of an ampersand, '&'.
With this patch, AOLserver will take a URI that uses semicolons and
not ampersands and correctly parse the URI into form variables and
their values.
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/appendix/notes.html#h-B.2.2
B.2.2 Ampersands in URI attribute values
The URI that is constructed when a form is submitted may be used as an
anchor-style link (e.g., the href attribute for the A
element). Unfortunately, the use of the "&" character to separate form
fields interacts with its use in SGML attribute values to delimit
character entity references. For example, to use the URI
"http://host/?x=1&y=2" as a linking URI, it must be written <A
href="http://host/?x=1&y=2"> or <A
href="http://host/?x=1&y=2">.
We recommend that HTTP server implementors, and in particular, CGI
implementors support the use of ";" in place of "&" to save authors
the trouble of escaping "&" characters in this manner.
This patch adds a config.tcl parameter
ns_section ns/server/yourserver
ns_param semicolonqueryseparator yes
The default value is no, or not examining URI's for semicolons.
nsd/nsconf.c - read ns_param semicolonseparator for ns_querytoset
nsd/nsconf.h - define CONN_SEMICOLON_SEP_BOOL for ns_querytoset
nsd/nsd.h - added semicolonseparator to struct conn in struct _nsconf
for ns_querytoset
nsd/conn.c - NS_QueryToSet - modified to examine semicolons inside of
a request
