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httpcase-sensitivecase-insensitiverfc

Are HTTP/1.0 status lines case sensitive or not?

I ran in to the following problem when correcting student assignments recently

the students had implemented a rudimentary web server and this solution sent back the status line in lower case like this

http/1.0 200 OK

It is not explicitly mentioned in RFC 1945 that this filed should be either case sensitive or insensitive, so how should one interpret the RFC in this regard.

Solution

  • The protocol name in status line in HTTP/1.1 is case-sensitive (see https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc9112#section-2.3).

    The ancient 1.0 spec is indeed not clear, but the I'm pretty sure the intent was to make this case-sensitive, too.