As it is, it is absolutely fine for me. I would prefer, that the complete URL is always passed to any function and the function has to extract the part it needs. But as it is, it works perfectly for us. I use the following syntax: root://server.domain:port/<lfn>?&authz=<authorization block> Because even for a stat command it can be useful, that you can specify some environment variable like the stagepool the file is on. Cheers Andreas.