CODEWITHSUNDEEP
htmlbrowserhref
4 Leave Cover
4 Leave Cover

Reputation: 1276

Why does an HREF consisting of a plain forward slash direct to the homepage?

I came across an HTML anchor which reads <a href="\">Home</a>.

Normally we put something like <a href="index.php">Home</a> but when I click on <a href="\">Home</a> I am able to go to the index page on the website.

I can't replicate the behavior on localhost.

Why does \ direct to the website's homepage, and was it intentional on the developer's part?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 2075

Answers (1)

Jacob Ford
Jacob Ford

Reputation: 5173

You are correct that it is incorrect, and it's almost certainly not intentional. Backslashes (\) are considered unsafe in URLs, and if a backslash is necessary in your URL you would normally have to encode it as %5C.

Why it works

As Rocket Hazmat pointed out in a comment on your question, most browsers automatically substitute / for \ in URLs.

So the link to \ is converted to /, which requests the root of the current server. The server is probably set up to serve some default file like index.php when it receives a request for a directory, and the result is loading the homepage.

Why it doesn't work in localhost

I don't know your local http server setup, but chances are it hasn't been configured to serve a specific page (like index.php) when it receives a request for a directory. So you are likely just seeing a directory listing of whatever is at the root of the local http server you are running locally.

Upvotes: 2

Related Questions