Re: Parser Error? from Bjoern Hoehrmann on 1999-06-14 (www-validator@w3.org from June 1999)

From: Bjoern Hoehrmann <hoermi@arcormail.de>
Date: Mon, 14 Jun 1999 22:14:23 +0200
To: "Lloyd Wood" <L.Wood@surrey.ac.uk>
Cc: <www-validator@w3.org>
Message-ID: <003601beb6a2$7eff99b0$c7e0a8c0@de>

| > So, for example, an &amp; _denotes_ the & character. When you
| > have HREF="http://host.dom/foo.pl?a=1&amp;b=2", then the URL
| > itself is http://host.dom/foo?a=1&b=2 but it must be written
| > slightly differently in HTML. An HTML parser or a validator
| > still does not parse the URL according to any specific syntax.
| > It does the same basic thing with &stuff as it does elsewhere.
|
| In theory. Practice can be a different thing.
|
| http://www.mg.co.za/mg/m&e/archive.htm
|
| Okay, yes, that's an ampersand in the URL and directory name, and
| they're running Apache 1.3.4 (unix).

This is an ampersand in an url not in a href attribute, not in html et al.

| What I'd dearly like to know is why:
|
| http://www.mg.co.za/mg/m&amp;e/archive.htm
|
| doesn't work. Yes, it's probably due to Netscape 4.5 not parsing &amp;
| correctly...

As a url it does not work, but in an href attribut it works in most Browser
(except Amaya e.g.).

In html the ampersand must be encoded, not in an Url. In an Url you should
better use %xx-encoding.

regards,
 Bjoern

Received on Monday, 14 June 1999 16:15:02 UTC