Re: Illegality of '~' in URLs

capple@master.control.att.com Tue, 16 January 1996 00:30 UTC

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Date: Mon, 15 Jan 1996 18:51:34 -0500
Message-Id: <199601152351.SAA25371@master.control.att.com>
To: uri@bunyip.com
Subject: Re: Illegality of '~' in URLs
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> From: Olle Jarnefors <ojarnef@admin.kth.se>
> To: uri@bunyip.com
> Cc: Peter Svanberg <psv@nada.kth.se>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