Query components

[Martin Atkins]

Johannes Ernst wrote:
> So what about
>     http://example.com/?a=b&c=d
> vs.
>     http://example.com/?c=d&a=b
> 
> I'd think that having identity URLs of this kind would be bad style, 
> but we can't exclude the possibility that somebody might do such a 
> thing for some weird purpose we haven't thought of ...
> 
> I guess we could:
>  - insist on string comparison
>  - order arguments alphabetically prior to string comparison
> 

We could go on forever thinking up cases like this. I think the only
safe answer is to explicitly say that the URL must be
character-for-character identical, since anything else is just going to
be implemented inconsistently or not at all. It's better to have
something simple that works everywhere than an unpredictable mess.