150663 - file:// URLs require HD name

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 140606

(Core :: Networking: File, defect)

Description

[Ken Harris]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.1a) Gecko/20020610
BuildID:    2002061003

file:// URLs (local disk) require the name of the disk before
any pathname.  This makes sharing URLs (e.g., via drag-n-drop)
with other browsers (IE, Omniweb) harder, since they don't allow
the disk name.

That is, the folder /Users exists (you can "ls /Users"
from a shell), and the URL "file:///Users/" works in both IE and
Omniweb, but Mozilla requires "file:///PowerBook%20HD/Users/"
(assuming your disk is named "PowerBook HD").

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Start Mozilla
2. Type in the URL "file:///Users/"
3. Press return

Actual Results:  Nothing happens (not even a warning/error).

Expected Results:  It should show the listing of /Users/ -- you have to type
something
like "file:///PowerBook%20HD/Users/" to see it.

Both Omniweb and IE file URLs use just the folder name, not the disk
name.  This prevents drag-n-drop of URLs between them and Mozilla.

Even if File -> Open File... puts in the name of the disk by default,
using the filename without should also work.  /Users really is a
folder; /"PowerBook HD" is not.

Comment 1

[Greg K.]

[file:///Users/] is equivalent to [file://localhost/Users/]. It implies that, at
the root level of the filesystem of localhost, there will be a substructure
(whether volume or directory) named "Users."

It is not appropriate to construct a file URL such as that and expect it to
locate a substructure named "Users" at some arbitrary location in localhost's
filesystem. If IE and OW both support this, they are assuming things they shouldn't.

For further reading, see paragraph 3.10 in
[ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/doc/rfc/rfc1738.txt], and also
[http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/fileurl.html].

Resolving Invalid.

Comment 2

[Ken Harris]

Gregk: "It implies that, at the root level of the filesystem of localhost,
there will be a substructure (whether volume or directory) named "Users.""

Uh, isn't there?  "ls -l /" lists "Users" as a directory in / -- /Users isn't
exactly arbitrary.  What is this assuming?

I pulled out the Mac OS X "System Overview" to see what's really supposed to be
there.  I'm can't tell if "Users" is explicitly declared to be in the root, but
(p.152) it says the "standard BSD directories such as /usr, /bin, and /etc."
are "root level", and file:///bin/ does not work.

Comment 3

[Greg K.]

Hmm, you're right. I'll reopen this while I look into it a bit closer.

Comment 4

[benc]

Most of what your are all saying about file:// URLs is correct, except what
nobody told you was that Mozilla still currently views the world as Mac OS
application, not as a UNIX (NeXTSTEPish?) application.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 140606 ***

Comment 5

[Frankie]

v