Re: Illegality of '~' in URLs

> From: Olle Jarnefors <ojarnef@admin.kth.se>
> To: uri@bunyip.com
> Cc: Peter Svanberg <psv@nada.kth.se>, Olle Jarnefors <ojarnef@admin.kth.se>
> Subject: Illegality of '~' in URLs
> 
> 14 % of the http: URLs used in messages to the html-wg mailing
> list this month includes the character tilde, '~'. (See the list
> at the bottom of this message.) Most or all of these originate
> from the Unix operating system, I assume.
> 
> RFC 1738 doesn't allow this character in http: URLs, though:
> 
> > httpurl        = "http://" hostport [ "/" hpath [ "?" search ]]
> > hpath          = hsegment *[ "/" hsegment ]
> > hsegment       = *[ uchar | ";" | ":" | "@" | "&" | "=" ]
> > uchar          = unreserved | escape
> > unreserved     = alpha | digit | safe | extra
> > safe           = "$" | "-" | "_" | "." | "+"
> > extra          = "!" | "*" | "'" | "(" | ")" | ","
> 
> Would it hurt to remove this restriction on URL syntax?
> In http: URLs? In all URLs?

I think it would hurt more to enforce the restriction.

Chris Apple
AT&T Internet Services Architecture
capple@master.control.att.com

Received on Monday, 15 January 1996 18:51:37 UTC