Hi Pierre, Nice to see your name pop up again.

Your suggestion is certainly simpler... but unfortunately, too much simpler.  One reason, is that in configuring a path to contain CGI files, the CGI files are allowed to be there, or anywhere deeper in the tree.  So configuring "/http/bin" should allow the CGI file to be any of:

/http/bin/some.cgi
/http/bin/application1/other.cgi
/http/bin/app2/subapp/third.cgi

and many more.

The second reason, is that once /http/bin is determined to be the path prefix, then the search down the tree is done for the cgi file.  Now let's say URL looks like:

http://server.com/http/bin/app2/subapp/third.cgi/more/path/info/params

It is appropriate to find third.cgi and execute it as a CGI file, and pass it as PATHINFO /more/path/info/params !  Yet, using your suggested over-simplification, "params" would be considered the CGI file (if it even exists), and /http/bin/app2/subapp/third.cgi/more/path/info certainly wouldn't exactly match /http/bin... so neither params nor third.cgi would get a chance to be executed.