More likely, they're stopping on the first space OR colon to parse the header name since "Content-Length : 0" is valid.
Personally, if I were writing a HTTP request parser while being lazy about enforcing spec, I'd split ONLY on the colon, then just strip the white space on either side of both the header name and value. In Python:
header, value = line.split(':', maxsplit=1)
header = header.strip().lower()
value = value.strip()
After that, `header` should ALWAYS be checked via equality, and never `.startswith(...)`.
Personally, if I were writing a HTTP request parser while being lazy about enforcing spec, I'd split ONLY on the colon, then just strip the white space on either side of both the header name and value. In Python:
After that, `header` should ALWAYS be checked via equality, and never `.startswith(...)`.