Best Gatherer of Referring URLs

Which programming language is the most accurate at gathering referring URLs?

I am trying to develop a program that relies heavily on gathering the exact referring URL, and there is no room for error. I have heard that many systems are only 90-95% correct when gathering this information.

Which route should I take?

Thanks in advance,
Justin

The referring URL is unreliable not because of any one particular language, but because not all browsers set this and they can be turned on/off on most modern browsers. It doesn't really matter with the system, it matters with the browser and user.

Thanks for the speedy response.

Okay, for example, what you are saying is that whenever I request the referral info using PHP through $_SERVER['HTTP_REFERER'] , the server is actually getting the referral information from the surfers web browser?

Justin

yes

I rarely read somethingawful.com, but I like the stories I hear about its admins. If you try and direct-link to a picture, it sends you a very different (and disgusting) picture instead for stealing the site's bandwidth. When something on the site got slashdotted, they redirected anyone coming from slashdot to goatse.cx (if you haven't been there, don't...I'm serious, don't say I didn't warn you).

These kinds of things are done with referrer logging, and since it can be turned off or faked, are utterly undependable. Use of it is better suited for things that don't really matter at all, like playing dirty tricks on unsuspecting users that access your site in ways you didn't intend.

Jesus... that's one bad [A]ss picture. OOPS! Excuse the pun!


But, be careful, since it's unreliable, you might be sending a genunine visitor to the wrong site!

...would be a funny gag to play on your employer's website if you knew you were about to be fired... hide it in the code somewhere... anybody visiting from [COMPETITOR'S URL HERE] will get sent to goatse.cx!

If you've ever read somethingawful, I don't think its patrons would be too offended at ending up there. It's not my wallpaper or anything (ugh...) but it's not far off the average tastes of Jeff K's rants.