- From: Skip Montanaro <skip@automatrix.com>
- Date: Sat, 25 Feb 1995 17:01:00 -0500
- To: www-talk@www0.cern.ch
Sorry to bomb the list with this (especially since I don't read www-talk...) but I'm getting desperate. I have what's got to be a common question, but in several hours of hunting around the Web today and scrounging through www-talk archives I haven't been able to get an answer to the following. Is their one universally acceptable (I hesitate to use the term "correct") way to embed "&" or other special characters in HREF attributes? Here's a specific example: I generate lists of CGI-type anchors in response to a number of different queries to the Musi-Cal database, for instance, <a href="http://www/calendar.com/cgi-bin?city=Basking%20Ridge&state=NJ">Basking Ridge</a>. This worked fine until a WinMosaic 2.0.0a9 user reported that it wasn't working. After scratching around off and on for a few days, I saw a note in one of the comp.infosystems.www newsgroups that said to use "&" instead. I tried it. So now I have <a href="http://www/calendar.com/cgi-bin?city=Basking%20Ridge&state=NJ">Basking Ridge</a>. Worked fine with Netscape 1.0N. (Doesn't everything? <blink>:-)</blink>). Worked fine with X Mosaic 2.1 and Lynx 2.3 as well. I checked with my user. Worked fine with him. Okey-dokey. Looks good. Into production. Now another user's browser is choking on "&" (can't recall which one at the moment - it's sort of immaterial at this point). He suggested "%26" instead. ARRRRGGGGH! Before I make another apparently major blunder, is there a single universally accepted version of "&" I can embed in my HREFs that the current versions of all browsers (e.g., I really don't care about X Mosaic 2.1 anymore, although I still use it occasionally). Failing that, is there a list somewhere of what the various browsers will accept? I started writing Python code to handle all the friggin' HTTP_USER_AGENT formats available -- what a mess! (HTTP_USER_AGENT, not Python) -- so I could work around this problem dynamically. I have been laboring under the assumption that the column labelled "CharAmpersand" in <URL:http://www.research.digital.com/nsl/formtest/stats-matrix.html> is somehow related to this problem. If not, please let me know... Help! (and thanks), -- Skip Montanaro skip@automatrix.com (518)372-5583 Musi-Cal: http://www.calendar.com/concerts/ -or- concerts@calendar.com Internet Conference Calendar: http://www.calendar.com/conferences/
Received on Saturday, 25 February 1995 17:01:12 UTC