HTTP 400 (bad request) for logical error, not malformed request syntax

Question

The HTTP/1.1 specification (RFC 2616) has the following to say on the meaning of status code 400, Bad Request (§10.4.1):

The request could not be unde

Answer 1

On Java EE servers a 400 is returned if your URL refers to a non-existent "web -application". Is that a "syntax error"? Depends on what you mean by syntax error. I would say yes.

In English syntax rules prescribe certain relationships between parts of speech. For instance "Bob marries Mary" is syntactically correct, because it follows the pattern {Noun + Verb + Noun}. Whereas "Bob marriage Mary" would be syntactically incorrect, {Noun + Noun + Noun}.

The syntax of a simple URLis { protocol + : + // + server + : + port }. According to this "http://www.google.com:80" is syntactically correct.

But what about "abc://www.google.com:80"? It seems to follow the exact same pattern. But really it is a syntax error. Why? Because 'abc' is not a DEFINED protocol.

The point is that determining whether or not we have a 400 situation requires more than parsing the characters and spaces and delimiters. It must also recognize what are the valid "parts of speech".