[Web-SIG] Loosening the CGI variable requirements in PEP 333

[Phillip J. Eby]

Currently, the requirement for CGI variables reads like this:

"""``environ`` Variables
---------------------

The ``environ`` dictionary is required to contain these CGI
environment variables, as defined by the Common Gateway Interface
specification [2]_.  The following variables **must** be present, but
**may** be an empty string, if there is no more appropriate value for
them:"""

I'd like to change that last sentence to:

"""The following variables **must** be present (unless their value
would be an empty string, in which case they may be omitted):"""

This means that other parts of the spec would need to use e.g. 
'environ.get("PATH_INFO","")'.  But, I think this change will make it a 
little bit easier on servers or gateways that already have some sort of CGI 
basis or support, without substantially affecting anything else.

Comments, anyone?

(By the way, as far as I can tell, this is the very last open issue for PEP 
333, so once this one's decided, I think it's time to begin the 
finalization process.)