Examples of Resolving Relative URLs, Part 4

This document has an embedded base URL of 
   Content-Base: fred:///s//a/b/c
in order to test a notion that Tim Berners-Lee mentioned regarding the ability of URIs to have a triple-slash (or even more slashes) to indicate higher levels of hierarchy than those already used by URLs.

Tested Clients and Client Libraries

[R]
RFC 2396 (the right way to parse)
Tim
Tim Berners-Lee's proposed interpretation
[1]
Mozilla/4.03 [en] (X11; U; SunOS 5.5 sun4u; Nav)
[2]
Lynx/2.7.1 libwww-FM/2.14
[3]
MSIE 3.01; Windows 95
[4]
NCSA_Mosaic/2.6 (X11;SunOS 4.1.2 sun4m)

Synopsis

RFC 1808 specified that the highest level for relative URLs is indicated by a double-slash "//", and therefore that any triple-slash would be considered a null site component, rather than a higher-level component than the site component (as proposed by Tim).

The URI draft assumes that a triple-slash means an empty site component. Netscape Navigator behaves irrationally, apparently because their parser is scheme-dependent and therefore doesn't do the hierarchical parsing that would be expected. Oddly, Lynx seems to straddle both sides.

Examples

                  RESULTS                       from

g:h            =  g:h                           [R,Tim,2,3]
                  fred:///s//a/b/g:h            [1]

g              =  fred:///s//a/b/g              [R,Tim,1,2,3]

./g            =  fred:///s//a/b/g              [R,Tim,2,3]
                  fred:///s//a/b/./g            [1]

g/             =  fred:///s//a/b/g/             [R,Tim,1,2,3]

/g             =  fred:///g                     [R,1,2,3]
                  fred:///s//a/g                [Tim]

//g            =  fred://g                      [R,1,2,3]
                  fred:///s//g                  [Tim]

//g/x          =  fred://g/x                    [R,1,2,3]
                  fred:///s//g/x                [Tim]

///g           =  fred:///g                     [R,Tim,1,2,3]

./             =  fred:///s//a/b/               [R,Tim,2,3]
                  fred:///s//a/b/./             [1]

../            =  fred:///s//a/                 [R,Tim,2,3]
                  fred:///s//a/b/../            [1]

../g           =  fred:///s//a/g                [R,Tim,2,3]
                  fred:///s//a/b/../g           [1]

../../         =  fred:///s//                   [R]
                  fred:///s//a/../              [Tim,2]
                  fred:///s//a/b/../../         [1]
                  fred:///s//a/                 [3]

../../g        =  fred:///s//g                  [R]
                  fred:///s//a/../g             [Tim,2]
                  fred:///s//a/b/../../g        [1]
                  fred:///s//a/g                [3]

../../../g     =  fred:///s/g                   [R]
                  fred:///s//a/../../g          [Tim,2]
                  fred:///s//a/b/../../../g     [1]
                  fred:///s//a/g                [3]

../../../../g  =  fred:///g                     [R]
                  fred:///s//a/../../../g       [Tim,2]
                  fred:///s//a/b/../../../../g  [1]
                  fred:///s//a/g                [3]