<div dir="auto"><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">I'm concerned that it's an exception across the suite of other protocols and that designing a consistent scheme for automatic swapping in would be a lot of work. </div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">What about https://.zip, or NETCDF:https://..nc:varname? Some just automatically work here after chain is unpicked? But also add vsizip?, what about others?</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">But yes I'm generally supportive, I don't think an effort to raise awareness of using GDAL protocols properly will succeed within the onslaught of downstream interfaces.</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">Cheers, Mike</div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div data-smartmail="gmail_signature" dir="auto"><div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr" style="color:rgb(34,34,34)"><div dir="ltr">Michael Sumner</div><div dir="ltr">Research Software Engineer<br>Australian Antarctic Division<br>Hobart, Australia</div><div dir="ltr">e-mail: <a href="mailto:mdsumner@gmail.com" style="color:rgb(17,85,204)" target="_blank">mdsumner@gmail.com</a></div></div></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote gmail_quote_container" dir="auto"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Sat, Mar 28, 2026, 04:15 Kirk Waters - NOAA Federal via gdal-dev <<a href="mailto:gdal-dev@lists.osgeo.org">gdal-dev@lists.osgeo.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><div dir="ltr"><div>Having made that mistake more than once, I would be in the happy camp.</div><div><br clear="all"></div><div><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature"><div dir="ltr"><div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">Kirk Waters, PhD </font></div><div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">NOAA Office for Coastal Management<br></font></div><div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif">Applied Sciences Program </font></div><div><div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><a href="http://coast.noaa.gov/digitalcoast" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">coast.noaa.gov/digitalcoast</a></font></div></div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div></div></div><br></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, Mar 27, 2026 at 1:08 PM Even Rouault via gdal-dev <<a href="mailto:gdal-dev@lists.osgeo.org" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer">gdal-dev@lists.osgeo.org</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">Hi,<br>
<br>
I suspect that almost every GDAL user, even the most experienced, has <br>
made the mistake of typing "gdalinfo <a href="https://example.com/my.tif" rel="noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">https://example.com/my.tif</a>" instead <br>
of "gdalinfo /vsicurl/<a href="https://example.com/my.tif" rel="noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">https://example.com/my.tif</a>". Both commands work, <br>
but the first one triggers the HTTP pseudo-driver which downloads the <br>
entire file into memory before passing it to the GeoTIFF driver, while <br>
the second reads it in chunks.<br>
<br>
I would be inclined to modify the GDALOpen() logic with the following <br>
tweak: if the passed filename starts with "http://" or "https://", <br>
automatically prepend "/vsicurl/", unless the string has query <br>
parameters. That restriction about not having query parameters is <br>
because in most of the cases this is for dynamically generated resources <br>
that don't support range requests.<br>
<br>
For users really wanting to go through the HTTP pseudo-driver, we'd <br>
modify it to accept a "HTTP:" prefix before the URL or it would trigger <br>
if using the "-if HTTP" argument of command line utilities (or <br>
allowed_drivers = ["HTTP"] in the API)<br>
<br>
So this change wouldn't be fully backwards compatible, but I feel it <br>
would still make more people happy than unhappy.<br>
<br>
Thoughts?<br>
<br>
Even<br>
<br>
-- <br>
<a href="http://www.spatialys.com" rel="noreferrer noreferrer" target="_blank">http://www.spatialys.com</a><br>
My software is free, but my time generally not.<br>
<br>
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