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Asked: 2026-05-25T20:22:32+00:00

I’ve found that header(‘HTTP/1.1 404’); works just as well as header(‘HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found’);

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I’ve found that header('HTTP/1.1 404'); works just as well as header('HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found'); in PHP. So I looked in the specification, but couldn’t find anything about it;

Is the HTTP status header description optional?

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  1. Editorial Team

    The description can be any human-readable string. Clients may not depend on the string and they must only check the code.

    However, as usual clients aren’t always complying. Browsers will probably do fine, but you can bet that there’s HTTP clients out there that specifically check for the string.

    HTTP/1.1 says:

    http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec6.html#sec6.1

    The client is not required to examine or display the Reason- Phrase.

    But HTTPbis clarified it with stronger wording:

    https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/draft-ietf-httpbis-p1-messaging-16#section-5.1.1

    A client SHOULD ignore the content of the Reason Phrase.

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