RFC 1738, 1808, 2396... FUCK!

The wording about what are valid or reserved characters in various parts of the URL contradicts itself multiple times across RFCs.

Do you have any idea how complex the grammar is to parse a URL?

[proto]:[maybe //][user]:[maybe pass but only if user is there][@ and remember empty user,pass is different than no user pass][host]:[maybe port who the hell knows]/[path which can have all sorts of fucked up characters]/[file, or maybe they are just screwing with you]?[doesn't have to have anything even with a ?, regardless these can be completely different reserved characters than those reserved in the path!]#[maybe nothing, maybe something]

That man is a sadist! From RFC1738:

For resiliency, programs interpreting URLs should treat upper case letters as equivalent to lower case in scheme names (e.g., allow "HTTP" as well as "http").

Yep, schemes are case insensitive, so are hostnames. Then he throws a curveball, because path names are case sensitive (because, as TBL reasons some schemes translate that to a file heirarchy). query strings? Well hell, those can be case insensitive. Can be? WTF is can be? Who would ever want to code an application with case sensitive searches hmmmmmm?

Of course, it never says that # isn't a valid path character. But it is!

I've got a state machine with 6 states, and that just gets me to the path!

[grinds teeth].... happythoughtshappythoughtshappythoughts