CODEWITHSUNDEEP
urlrfc
Moffe
Moffe

Reputation: 591

Can . (period) be part of the path part of an URL?

Is the following URL valid?

http://www.example.com/module.php/lib/lib.php

According to https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1738 section the hpath element of an URL can not contain a '.' (period). There is in the above case a '.' after "module" which is not allowed according to RFC1738.

Am I reading the RFC wrong or is this RFC succeed by another RFC? Some other RFC's allows '.' in URLs (https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1808).

Upvotes: 47

Views: 40328

Answers (4)

speedplane
speedplane

Reputation: 16121

As others have noted, periods are allowed in URLs, but be careful. If a single or double period is used in part of a URL's path, the browser will treat it as a change in the path, and you may not get the behavior you want.

For example:

  • www.example.com/foo/./ redirects to www.example.com/foo/
  • www.example.com/foo/../ redirects to www.example.com/

Whereas the following will not redirect:

  • www.example.com/foo/bar.biz/
  • www.example.com/foo/..biz/
  • www.example.com/foo/biz../

Upvotes: 19

vickirk
vickirk

Reputation: 4067

Nothing wrong with a period in a url. If you look at the makeup in the grammar in the link you provided a period is mentioned via the 'safe' group, which is included via uchar a

Ignore my answer, Adams is better

Upvotes: 2

Greg Burdett
Greg Burdett

Reputation: 191

Periods are allowed. See section "2.3 Unreserved Characters" in this document: https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3986

"Characters that are allowed in a URI but do not have a reserved purpose are called unreserved. These include uppercase and lowercase letters, decimal digits, hyphen, period, underscore, and tilde".

Upvotes: 11

Adam Batkin
Adam Batkin

Reputation: 52964

I don't see where RFC1738 disallows periods (.) in URLs. Here are some excerpts from there:

hpath          = hsegment *[ "/" hsegment ]
hsegment       = *[ uchar | ";" | ":" | "@" | "&" | "=" ]
uchar          = unreserved | escape
unreserved     = alpha | digit | safe | extra
safe           = "$" | "-" | "_" | "." | "+"

So the answer to your question is: Yes, http://www.example.com/module.php/lib/lib.php is a valid URL.

Upvotes: 61

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