don't muck with the URI's -- it renders then diff...

# http4k

[DALDEI]

don't muck with the URI's -- it renders then different URIs -- with a few exceptions, but slash removal is not an exception.
It is acceptable for a server to treat different URIs as equivalent, for example consider a simple static web server with files that are symbolic or hard linked -- there may be different 'equivalent' URIs for the 'same' files.
Similarly the trailing "/" can be treated as equivalent by the server -- but they are still distinct URIs, and one should not assume other servers act the same.
The closest to what is being discussed that is an oddity is collapsing the "/"s when using a scheme that allows an optional host component. This is a gray area, most commonly observed in file:/ URIs is file:/root/dir == file://localhost/root/dir == file:///root/dir ? ask Java 🙂 -- it gets it wrong -- but its a common shortcut.
but that is not the same as http://www.google.com////////////////////////////////////abc != http://www.google.com///////abc
The server may choose to serve the same file in both cases -- or it may not In Linux file-systems its common but not universal to collapse root directory slashes like ///////home/user == /home/user -> but /home///////user != /home/user -- but that isn't strictly kosher -- there are file-systems that are similar to windows such that "//'" is used to indicate a remote host mount.
Please don't make these kinds of non-conforming changes to the core library -- if a user wants to map "///////mydir" to "/something else" they can --
Deailing with URI's and URL's by following the specs is hard enough to get right -- muck with then and the Jinga tower falls over.