[ILUG] url encoding..

[Dave Wilson]

> > >  OK, say if some muppet makes loads of images with spaces in the
> > > filenames, and uploads them to a website. Is it up to the HTML writer, the
> > > web browser, or the webserver to rewrite the spaces to %20's ?
> > AFAIK, the browser converts the spaces in the request to %20's

This can't be relied upon. Some browsers will convert, some will chop, and
some will pass the space right through to the server or proxy (whose behaviour
again is implementation defined).

>  Ah. So it's the Netscape client that's brain dead. I'll just have to tell
> them to use IE then..

Nope. A URL with a space in it is wrong, and should never be fed to the
browser (i.e. should never appear in a HREF) in the first place. A file
on a web server with a space in it is fine; the correct URL reference will
have space replaced with %20.

IOW: The onus is on the author.

I note that way back in Netscape 1.1, it was very forgiving of mistakes like
forgetting to plant a close quote before the end of the <A HREF> tag. So many
broken webpages that only Netscape could parse started springing up that they
went back on this in Netscape 2.

Dave

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