??? I do not know what you mean, my GET request _has_ a content-lenght header! For HEAD, I just do not calculate the expencive data for my body.
that is exactly what I mean - if you include a C-L header on a GET then you are supposed to have one for a HEAD request as well, expensive or not. HEAD is supposed to be exactly the same as a GET in all respects except that it does not have a message body.
From RFC 2616:
"The HEAD method is identical to GET except that the server MUST NOT return a message-body in the response. The metainformation contained in the HTTP headers in response to a HEAD request SHOULD be identical to the information sent in response to a GET request."
From RFC 2119:
"SHOULD This word, or the adjective "RECOMMENDED", mean that there may exist valid reasons in particular circumstances to ignore a particular item, but the full implications must be understood and carefully weighed before choosing a different course."
I think here we've hit a "valid reason in particular circumstance" to strip the content-length header.
As for the implications, content-length is used for persistent HTTP connections but that doesn't happen for HEAD requests - only for GETs. Hence there should be no ill side effects by stripping the Content-Length metadata for HEAD requests.
Cheers, Jean-Michel.
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