Common Log format

Paul Phillips (paulp@cerf.net)
Wed, 12 Apr 1995 18:11:17 +0500


I have a serious problem with the Common Logfile format, as presented at
<URL:http://w3.org/hypertext/WWW/Daemon/User/Config/Logging.html#
common-logfile-format>. It indicates that the "request" portion of the
log entry should be:

The request line exactly as it came from the client.

Unfortunately with directory indexing, this means that three different
requests all have the same semantic meaning:

GET /dirname
GET /dirname/
GET /dirname/index.html

(Assuming that index.html is the dir index file, this too can vary.) Are
the current logfile processing programs taking this vagarity into
account? I intend to log

GET /dirname/index.html

in all cases where index.html existed, and

GET /dirname/

in all cases where it doesn't, unless somebody can provide me with a
really good reason not to. One of the features of the server I am
writing will be reliable logging, so this is a little more important than
it might sound.

Comments?

-PSP