Re: URL parsing and IPv6 addresses

Larry Masinter writes:
 > Square brackets "[" "]" are currently not allowed in URLs, and are
 > listed as "unsafe":
 > 
 > 
 > >				Other characters are unsafe because
 > >   gateways and other transport agents are known to sometimes modify
 > >   such characters. These characters are "{", "}", "|", "\", "^", "~",
 > >   "[", "]", and "`".
 > 
 > two alternatives seem workable:
 > 
 >    1) dotted decimal with 8 parts instead of 4
 >    2) string of hex with no punctuation
 > 
 > - Larry
 > 
 > 

How about just using some other punctuation besides ":" before port numbers
in URLs for IPv6, for example ";"?  Surely the URL parser is going to have
to know whether it's an IPv4 or IPv6 IP address by the time it gets
that far.