IETF URI Working Group Internet-Draft draft-ietf-uri-url-finger-01.txt Expires August 24, 1995 finger URL Specification Status of This Memo This document is an Internet-Draft. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet-Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet- Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as ``work in progress.'' To learn the current status of any Internet-Draft, please check the ``1id-abstracts.txt'' listing contained in the Internet- Drafts Shadow Directories on ftp.is.co.za (Africa), nic.nordu.net (Europe), munnari.oz.au (Pacific Rim), ds.internic.net (US East Coast), or ftp.isi.edu (US West Coast). Abstract A new URL scheme, "finger", is defined. It allows client software to request information from finger servers that conform to RFC 1288. Description Many Internet hosts publish information through the finger protocol, as described in RFC 1288. In order to allow that information to be located in a standard fashion, a "finger" URL is needed. The "finger" URL has the form: finger: where is of the form: [%2FW[*<%20>]][username]@hostname[*@hostname] All requests must be sent to the standard TCP finger port, 79 (decimal). A finger URL that does not include a host name, such as: finger:someuser should be rejected by the client software. The request send by a finger client should follow the rules in RFC 1288 for stripping host names. For example, the URL: finger:someuser@host1.bigstate.edu would cause a finger client to send the request "someuser" to port 79 at host1.bigstate.edu. Encoding RFC1738 requires that many characters in URLs be encoded. This affects the finger scheme in that some requests may contain space (" ", ASCII hex 20) and forward slash ("/", ASCII hex 2F). These characters must be encoded in the URL following the rules in RFC 1738. Clients should not decode CR and LF characters in a URL. Examples Typically, a finger URL will be something like: finger:nasanews@space.mit.edu However, note that some requests might look like: finger:someuser@host1.bigstate.edu@host2.bigstate.edu and: finger:%2FW%20someuser@host1.bigstate.edu Security RFC 1288 contains a detailed section on both client and host security that should be read by anyone implementing clients that allow the finger URL. Specifically, client software should check for any unsafe characters and character strings received before displaying the results of a query. Author contact information: Paul E. Hoffman Proper Publishing 127 Segre Place Santa Cruz, CA 95060 USA Tel: 408-426-6222 phoffman@proper.com