- From: David W. Morris <dwm@shell.portal.com>
- Date: Sun, 11 Feb 1996 01:27:08 -0800 (PST)
- To: Larry Masinter <masinter@parc.xerox.com>
- Cc: fielding@avron.ICS.UCI.EDU, http-wg%cuckoo.hpl.hp.com@hplb.hpl.hp.com
On Sun, 11 Feb 1996, Larry Masinter wrote: > + should be 'reserved'. The definition of 'reserved' is whether the > character has the same interpretation whether escaped or not escaped. > 'reserved' characters may appear in URLs, and must only be escaped > when used within a context where it has a reserved meaning and would > otherwise be confused with that meaning. (This depends on the scheme; > for example '@' is has a reserved meaning in 'mailto:', but '/' does > not. > > % is special, because it *is* the encoding character. It's labelled > 'unsafe' because unsafe characters may not appear in URLs. You can say > '% may not appear in URLs' but of course, the "except for its use > within an escape sequence". I'm sorry, but the + is also an encoding character based on RFC 1866 and current practice. It encodes anoother unsafe character, the SPace. We could debate forever whether we need both, but we have both. And I suspect that the + for SPace is an effective optimization since many forms require spaces but few +es. Dave Morris
Received on Sunday, 11 February 1996 01:29:38 UTC