Example.com Has Changed

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Posted by timothy on Sunday January 30, 2011 @06:25AM from the foo-baz-is-now-frum-burz dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The familiar example.com domain, reserved for private testing, has been updated. Visiting the domain in a web browser no longer displays any content; instead, visitors are redirected to an explanatory page on IANA's website at iana.org/domains/example/. Other example domains such as example.net are also affected. Is this a bad change? Will the redirect cause problems for anybody?"

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For documentation purposes by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-30 06:28 · Score: 5, Insightful

The domains are designed to be used as examples in free text, not to be visited. Not to be pinged, scraped, tracerouted or anything else that involved actually accessing them via the Internet.
So how does "Will the redirect cause problems for anybody?" make any sense?
1. Re:For documentation purposes by Dynedain · 2011-01-30 07:03 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Example.com at least isn't a change in that scenario because it used to resolve to a specific server. Now that it resolves with a redirect, I don't see much difference at the DNS layer.
  
  --
  I'm out of my mind right now, but feel free to leave a message.....
2. Re:For documentation purposes by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-30 07:49 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  It doesn't make sense, but it's probably a requirement that most inane non-issue articles be posted with a leading question that stirs up discussion where little is needed and controversy where none exists.
you might have bigger problem by JonySuede · 2011-01-30 06:29 · Score: 5, Insightful

If your application is so broken that it depends on the behavior of exemple.com to be correct, you have a bigger problems than this.

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Jehovah be praised, Oracle was not selected
1. Re:you might have bigger problem by Bogtha · 2011-01-30 07:45 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Then that was a bug in Darcs. example.com was never a guarantee that any particular URL served from that domain would fail. Also note that they said that the URL would fail. That is not the same as the domain not existing. example.com has existed for years and years. Presumably they were appending a random string to http://example.com/ and hoping to get a 404. If the test suite was expecting example.com to not exist, then it never would have worked in the first place.
  
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  Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
2. Re:you might have bigger problem by klapaucjusz · 2011-01-30 08:13 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  If you need a dns entry that doesn't exist, pick one that you are authoritative for and make sure it doesn't exist.
  That's exactly what they did:
  
  -not darcs get http://example.com/foo
  +not darcs get http://darcs.net/nonexistent
3. Re:you might have bigger problem by Anonymous Coward · 2011-01-30 08:56 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  The test suite of Darcs needs a domain that doesn't exist. It used to use example.com for that purpose, which now fails:
  
  Sat Jan 29 16:18:53 CET 2011 Ganesh Sittampalam
  * switch test to use a URL we can make sure will fail
  Seems like the behaviour of http://example.com/ changed to start serving
  pages at all URLs...
  ".example" is recommended for use in documentation or as examples.
  ".invalid" is intended for use in online construction of domain names that are sure to be invalid and which it is obvious at a glance are invalid.
  Guess they should read the rfc.
No by OverlordQ · 2011-01-30 06:35 · Score: 4, Informative

GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: www.example.com
HTTP/1.0 302 Found
Location: http://www.iana.org/domains/example/
Server: BigIP
Connection: Keep-Alive
Content-Length: 0
If that breaks your program, you're doing it wrong.

--
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
1. Re:No by TheRaven64 · 2011-01-30 06:47 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  It won't break your program, but it might break your example. I've seen HTTP tutorials that show using telnet to connect to example.com, and getting a response. Now the response is different, so anyone who tries the example will see a redirect instead of a content reply.
  It's not a serious problem, but it may cause a small amount of confusion for a tiny group of people.
  
  --
  I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Re:really? by Captain+Spam · 2011-01-30 06:37 · Score: 4, Informative

It may not matter very much, but it definitely is "news for nerds", in that nerds are the only one who would even notice. They never said it was "news for nerds && stuff that matters".

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Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.
IANA by captain_dope_pants · 2011-01-30 06:45 · Score: 4, Funny

They are not a what ?

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while (true != false) process_more_stupid_code();
Re:really? by BatGnat · 2011-01-30 06:46 · Score: 5, Informative

I don't know, it is pretty Earth shattering news.
I don't think i will be able to sleep at work today because of it....
In other news... by Chelloveck · 2011-01-30 06:46 · Score: 5, Funny

The meta-syntactic variable 'foo' now redirects to 'bar'. Please update your placeholders accordingly.

--
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Example please. by gstrickler · 2011-01-30 06:47 · Score: 5, Funny

Please provide an example of how it should work.

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make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
Re:Hm. How about tempuri.org by simplypeachy · 2011-01-30 07:24 · Score: 3, Insightful

Alternatively you could use http://example.com/ instead of making up your own stuff which serves no purpose whatsoever.