Date: 1/22/2008 1:20 am · Subject: Re: choice of type of redirect on redirect assets
If I understand correctly this is very important for search engine optimization since if you use 301 the search engine will reindex using the new url and forget the old one.
I fear that redirects are often misused for getting some kind of 'shortcut' to another place, there 302 would be the least disturbing option.
For the full list of status codes: http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html