NWA-PCUG Newsletter Article
Working Addresses Found on the Big Wire
John Clark, WebMaster, April 98
rcmahq@nwark.com
(click to email author)


Have you ever done a search on the Internet and found an address such as: http://www.foo.com/~henry/dog/cat/cow.htm

Lets take a look at the address and break it down by parts.

http://www.foo.com indicates we are making a request to the domain foo.com to deal with it using HyperText Transfer Protocol. The www indicates foo.com is someplace on the World Wide Web. {note not all browsers require the www}.

The /~henry implies Henry has an account on foo.com and we are requesting to enter the public area of this account. {you can usually send e-mail to Henry at the address henry@foo.com}.

The /dog/cat indicates that Henry had a subdirectory dog in his public area with a sub-sub directory called cat. The actual web page is cow.htm {some web pages are xxxx.html -- as near as this writer can determine, this is an indication of a Unix system and is not very important to a web user.}

Often when you get a long address like the above, you can find out a lot about Henry by pealing back from the rear the parts of the address. For example:

http://www.foo.com/~henry/dog/cat
http://www.foo.com/~henry/dog
http://www.foo.com/~henry
http://www.foo.com

Each of the above addresses may have a default web page that can be interesting to view.

If you are so inclined: http://www.yahoo.com/Science/Mathematics/Slide_Rules/ is an address you can spend several hours playing with. It differs from the foo.com address in that it is a commercial system, not a private user like Henry.

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