14.32 Pragma

The Pragma general-header field is used to include implementation- specific directives that may apply to any recipient along the request/response chain. All pragma directives specify optional behavior from the viewpoint of the protocol; however, some systems MAY require that behavior be consistent with the directives.

          Pragma            = "Pragma" ":" 1#pragma-directive

          pragma-directive  = "no-cache" | extension-pragma
          extension-pragma  = token [ "=" ( token | quoted-string ) ]

When the no-cache directive is present in a request message, an application SHOULD forward the request toward the origin server even if it has a cached copy of what is being requested. This pragma directive has the same semantics as the no-cache cache-directive (see section 14.9) and is defined here for backwards compatibility with HTTP/1.0. Clients SHOULD include both header fields when a no-cache request is sent to a server not known to be HTTP/1.1 compliant.

Pragma directives MUST be passed through by a proxy or gateway application, regardless of their significance to that application, since the directives may be applicable to all recipients along the request/response chain. It is not possible to specify a pragma for a specific recipient; however, any pragma directive not relevant to a recipient SHOULD be ignored by that recipient.

HTTP/1.1 clients SHOULD NOT send the Pragma request-header. HTTP/1.1 caches SHOULD treat "Pragma: no-cache" as if the client had sent "Cache-Control: no-cache". No new Pragma directives will be defined in HTTP.