  Re: Semantics of Content-Range in the PUT method  From:
Jeffrey Mogul <mogul@pa.dec.com> Date: Mon, 27 Jan 97 18:48:12
PST Message-Id: <9701280248.AA16611@acetes.pa.dec.com> To:
Gordon Strachan <strachan%waterloo.hp.com@hplb.hpl.hp.com> Cc:
http-wg%cuckoo.hpl.hp.com@hplb.hpl.hp.com     I have a question
about the intended operation of the Content-Range     range
header in the PUT method. In section 14.17 the format is
given as:      Content-Range: bytes first_byte-last_byte/length
Now, I assume that the indication of the first and last is where
in     the specified entity, the new data should be stored. But,
in this     case, what does the length indicate?  Generally, it
means the total     length of the requested entity. But in this
case, is it the length     of the entity before the update is
applied or after? Furthermore,     how can the client reliably
know the length of the target entity?     The client can get it
with a HEAD method but it can't guarantee     that the length
won't have changed