2 ms·
If there's anything to "apologize" for with URLs, it would be the use of the ampersand character for separating query parameters, as these are interpreted as SG
by tannhaeuser 6y ago
If there's anything to "apologize" for with URLs, it would be the use of the ampersand character for separating query parameters, as these are interpreted as SGML ERO (entity reference open) character in SGML default concrete syntax, making SGML parsers see an entity reference in links such as http://bla.bla/doc?param=value&otherparam=othervalue http://bla.bla/doc?param=value&otherparam=othervalue. XML doesn't help here as it rejects the whole string as attribute value. This is also IMHO an oversight in the XML and WebSGML specs (the latter allowing to circumvent the issue via so-called data attributes).
- codesnik 6y agothere were attempts to use ; instead, many query parsers in standard libraries still split parameters pairs on semicolon. But who cares if browsers still generate & in GET forms
- goto11 6y agoURL's were supposed to be universal, not limited to any particular media format. The ampersand have to be escaped as & in SGML/HTML/XML. Other formats will need other escapes - no characters are "safe" in all formats.