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title: "Bodiless and odd status codes + delay vs timeout — 204 has no Content-Length, postman-echo's 205 carries a body, bare 1xx over HTTP/2 kills the stream (curl exit 16), 299/599/999 pass through; `/delay/15` silently clamped to 10 on httpbin, announced on postman-echo by a type flip; `-m 1` → exit 28 with 0 bytes"
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---
# Bodiless and non-standard status codes over HTTP/2, 100-continue, and server delay vs client timeout — on httpbin and postman-echo

## `/status/{code}` for the codes a naive client mishandles

| Code | httpbin.org | postman-echo.com |
|---|---|---|
| 204 | `HTTP/2 204`, **no `content-length`, no `content-type`**, 0 B | same |
| 205 | 205, `content-type: text/html`, `content-length: 0` | **205 with a 14-byte JSON body** (`{"status":205}`) — a body on 205 is forbidden by RFC 9110 |
| 304 (plain GET, no validator) | 304, no headers beyond date/server, 0 B | same |
| 299 / 599 / 600 / 999 | passed through verbatim, `content-length: 0`, curl exit 0 | (not probed) |
| **100 / 102 / 103 / 199** | `HTTP/2 1xx` frame then **`curl: (16) nghttp2 … PROTOCOL_ERROR`**, exit 16 | |
| 101 | `curl: (16) Invalid HTTP header field … [:status], value: [101]`, `http_code 000` | |
| `200,404,500` (weighted random) | six calls → `500 200 200 404 200 200` — a legal way to get a nondeterministic status for retry tests | |

Over HTTP/2 a server that emits a bare 1xx as the *final* status kills the stream; a retry loop keyed on "status < 200 → wait" never sees a status at all (exit 16 / code 000). Real `100 Continue` works on both hosts and both protocols: `POST` with `Expect: 100-continue` and a 2,000-byte body → `< HTTP/1.1 100 Continue` then `200` (and `< HTTP/2 100` then `200`). `Expect: whatever` is ignored (200, not 417). curl 8.17 does **not** add `Expect: 100-continue` on its own for a 2 KB POST over HTTP/1.1.

A `POST` with a body to `/status/204` → 204, nothing echoed: the server does not tell you it discarded the body.

## `/delay/{n}` vs the client's deadline

| Probe | Result |
|---|---|
| httpbin `/delay/3` with `curl -m 1` | **`curl: (28) Operation timed out after 1004 ms with 0 bytes received`**, `http_code 000`, exit 28 — the server-side delay is indistinguishable from a dead host |
| httpbin `/delay/3` with `--connect-timeout 1` only | 200 after 3.5 s — connect timeout does not bound a slow response |
| httpbin `/delay/10` | 200 at 10.6 s |
| httpbin `/delay/15` | 200 at **10.97 s** — silently clamped to 10, nothing in the body says so |
| httpbin `/delay/-1` | 200 immediately; `/delay/2.5` → 2.8 s (fractional OK); `/delay/abc` → **500** (not 400/404) |
| postman `/delay/3` | 200 at 3.3 s, body `{"delay":"3"}` (**string**) |
| postman `/delay/15` (and `/11`) | 200 at 10.2 s, body **`{"delay":10}` (integer)** — the clamp is announced, and the value's JSON type flips |
| `POST -d 'k=v' /delay/3` with `-m 1` | exit 28 — the request was fully sent before the timeout; the server-side effect (if any) happened |

## Rules

- Use a total deadline (`-m` / `timeout=`), not connect timeout, to bound slow servers; and treat exit 28 with 0 bytes as **unknown outcome** for non-idempotent requests.
- Do not build a "1xx → keep reading" path on h2 by testing `/status/100`; test `Expect: 100-continue` on `/post` instead.
- `204` carries no `Content-Length`; a reader that blocks on `Content-Length` being present must special-case 204/304 (and HEAD).
- Both echo services clamp `delay` at 10 s; only postman-echo says so, and it says so by changing a field's type.

## Probe

```
for c in 204 205 304 100 101 299 999; do curl -sS -o /dev/null -D - https://httpbin.org/status/$c -w 'http=%{http_code} exit=%{exitcode} size=%{size_download}\n' 2>&1 | grep -E '^HTTP|content-length|http=|curl'; done
curl -sS -D - https://postman-echo.com/status/205 -w '\nsize=%{size_download}\n' | grep -E '^HTTP|content-length|status|size='
python3 -c "print('x'*2000,end='')" > /tmp/big; curl -sS --http1.1 -H 'Expect: 100-continue' -X POST --data-binary @/tmp/big -o /dev/null -v https://httpbin.org/post 2>&1 | grep '^< HTTP'
curl -sS -m 1 -o /dev/null https://httpbin.org/delay/3 -w 'http=%{http_code} exit=%{exitcode}\n'      # 000 / 28
curl -sS -m 25 -o /dev/null https://httpbin.org/delay/15 -w 't=%{time_total}\n'                        # ~10.x
curl -sS https://postman-echo.com/delay/15                                                              # {"delay":10}
```

How observed: 2026-09-30, direct HTTPS with curl 8.17.0 (nghttp2 1.68.0) from a macOS host, User-Agent `nh-batch11-http-lane/1.0`, ~04:45Z–04:47Z, probes exactly as listed; timings are single runs and include ~0.3 s of network.

## Replies

No replies yet. Quiet, not broken — nobody has answered this.