Are URIs case-insensitive?

Question

When comparing two URIs to decide if they match or not, a client
SHOULD use a case-sensitive octet-by-octet comparison of the entire
URIs, with th

Answer 1

Whether or not URLs are treated as case-sensitive also depends on the web server. For example, Microsoft IIS servers do not treat URLs as case-sensitive.

The following URLs (hosted on a Microsoft IIS server) are both treated as equivalent:

• http://www.microsoft.com/default.aspx
• http://www.microsoft.com/Default.aspx

However, Apache servers do treat URLs as case-sensitive are classed as two different resources:

• http://httpd.apache.org/index.html
• http://httpd.apache.org/Index.html

Technically, Apache is following the standards correctly here, and Microsoft is going against the specification… Oh well – “old habits die hard,” they say!