lynx-dev Why does http://foo.bah/ turn into /foo.bah/ ?

[Mark Burton]

Hi,

I'm trying to use lynx 2.8 on a Linux system that runs a squid proxy
cache (and most of the time doesn't have a connection to the Internet
and, therefore, can't resolve names).

Lynx 2.8 exhibits some odd behaviour which is probably due to
misconfiguration but I haven't found the problem yet.

If I specify an URL on the command line like this:

lynx http://www.xemacs.org/

I get a response like this from squid:

                                     ERROR

The requested URL could not be retrieved
     _________________________________________________________________

   While trying to retrieve the URL: /www.xemacs.org/

   The following error was encountered:
     * Invalid URL 

   Some aspect of the requested URL is incorrect. Possible problems:
     * Missing or incorrect access protocol (should be `http://'' or
       similar)
     * Missing hostname
     * Illegal double-escape in the URL-Path
     * Illegal character in hostname; underscores are not allowed
     _________________________________________________________________


I know that the cache contains the page I want because I can retrieve
its headers like this:

address@hidden: HEAD http://www.xemacs.org/
200 OK
Date: Tue, 20 Oct 1998 01:29:52 GMT
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Age: 184620
Server: Apache/1.3.1 (Unix) PHP/3.0.3
Content-Length: 4611
Content-Type: text/html
ETag: "1a824-1203-36136dc9"
Last-Modified: Thu, 01 Oct 1998 11:55:53 GMT
Client-Date: Thu, 22 Oct 1998 14:39:14 GMT
Client-Peer: 192.168.1.1:3128
Proxy-Connection: close
X-Cache: HIT from tower.ordern.com

Does this mean that lynx can only retrieve pages from hosts whose
addresses it can resolve? 

Furthermore, why has it removed the http:/ from the start of the URL?

If anyone can help, please mail me directly as I don't subscribe to
the list. (I already receive far too much email)

Thanks,

Mark