# Illegality of '~' in URLs

Olle Jarnefors (ojarnef@admin.kth.se)
Mon, 15 Jan 96 21:46:47 +0100

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    Date: Mon, 15 Jan 96 21:46:47 +0100

    Message-Id: <9601152046.AA05415@mercutio.admin.kth.se>

    From: Olle Jarnefors <ojarnef@admin.kth.se>

    To: uri@bunyip.com

    Subject: Illegality of '~' in URLs

Repost of a message that probably got lost due to list manager
problems at bunyip.com. The phrase "this month" refers to the
time span 1 - 21 Dec 1995.

Date: Fri, 22 Dec 95 15:18:17 +0100
Message-Id: <9512221418.AA15880@mercutio.admin.kth.se>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: Text/Plain; charset=us-ascii
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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?

/Olle

    --
    Olle Jarnefors, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm <ojarnef@admin.kth.se>

    Tilde-illegal URLs found in messages on the html-wg list 951201/951222
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------

    http://homepage.interaccess.com/~driscoll/
    http://infomatch.com/~haibeck
    http://www.acl.lanl.gov/~rdaniel/
    http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~william
    http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~burchard/www/interactive/
    http://www.dsv.su.se/~jpalme
    http://www.spyglass.com/~eric/
    http://www.ucc.ie/~pflynn/books/wwwbook.html

    49 of the URLs did _not_ contain '~'.

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