Why does CGI::query_string make semicolons the rule, not the exception?

esharris has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

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Re: Why does CGI::query_string make semicolons the rule, not the exception? by adrianh (Chancellor) on Apr 13, 2004 at 14:43 UTC
But my version of MIE still expects ampersands. Which browser uses the newstyle urls? All browsers support ';' in URLs. It's the application running on the web server that will or will not support ';' vs '&' to separate CGI key/value pairs. Shouldn't ampersand be the default? I don't think so. The problem with using & is that it should be escaped in XHTML as `&`. Since people forget to do this all of the time you get a lot of invalid XHTML around. Using ';' solves the problem. Since applications built with CGI do support using ';' it makes sense for this to be the default.	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Why does CGI::query_string make semicolons the rule, not the exception? by eserte (Deacon) on Apr 13, 2004 at 14:49 UTC
It's not the browser which processes the querystring separator, it's the server side which needs to know to process the semicolon. So if you're using a recent CGI.pm or Apache.pm on the server side, everything's fine. But there's a lot of other CGI processing modules (mostly for other languages) which cannot process the semicolon separator (hit me two times in the last six months). You can find the ";" proposal in RFC 1866, section 8.2.1.	[reply]
Re: Re: Why does CGI::query_string make semicolons the rule, not the exception? by tachyon (Chancellor) on Apr 13, 2004 at 15:34 UTC
It is easy to change the behaviour as noted above. I think it is wrong for similar reasons to you. If you have a look at the defaults for CGI::Simple you will see that many of the defaults are different. cheers tachyon	[reply]
Re: Re: Why does CGI::query_string make semicolons the rule, not the exception? by esharris (Monk) on Apr 27, 2004 at 18:30 UTC
The semicolon separator didn't work here. <META HTTP-EQUIV="Refresh" CONTENT="0;URL=http://www.free-cgi.com"> If the url is a script with multiple parameters, my server doesn't like semi-colon separators. Here, I had to go back to ampersands.	[reply]
Re: Why does CGI::query_string make semicolons the rule, not the exception? by blokhead (Monsignor) on Apr 13, 2004 at 14:22 UTC
Update: Sorry.. Realized you weren't asking how to change the URL style emitted by query_string... You probably know how to do that. I'm not sure which browsers do support the semicolon style, and I can't remember ever seeing a site use it (probably due to your claim about MSIE not liking it). Anyway, nothing to see here folks.. ... ~~Check the docs! You can specify your preference like this: `use CGI qw/param -oldstyle_urls/;`~~ -newstyle_urls Separate the name=value pairs in CGI parameter query strings with semicolons rather than ampersands. For example: `?name=fred;age=24;favorite_color=3` [download] Semicolon-delimited query strings are always accepted, but will not be emitted by self_url() and query_string() unless the -newstyle_urls pragma is specified. This became the default in version 2.64. -oldstyle_urls Separate the name=value pairs in CGI parameter query strings with ampersands rather than semicolons. This is no longer the default. blokhead	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Re: Why does CGI::query_string make semicolons the rule, not the exception? by hardburn (Abbot) on Apr 13, 2004 at 14:52 UTC
I can't remember ever seeing a site use it Any site using XHTML and passes GET parameters in links has to use that form (assuming they want their XHTML to pass validation). Strict XHTML thinks '&' is always the start of an escape (like ' '), so your choices are to either seperate with semi-colons or to use '&' instead. Laziness dictates which one is used. ---- `: () { :\|:& };:` Note: All code is untested, unless otherwise stated	[reply] [d/l]