Can URL contain colons to represent a value other than port number

Question

Can URL contain colons to represent a value other than port number. The value can be a mac address of a machine.

Sample URL

http://172.17.48.10/lab/first/C0:4A:00:40:71:0A/wan

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2053132/is-a-colon-safe-for-friendly-url-use might be useful — Devesh, Feb 19 '15 at 15:21

score 0 · Accepted Answer · edited Oct 07 '21 at 06:31

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What you're referring to is an HTTP URL. There are dozens of other URL types out there -- after all, URL stands for nothing more than uniform ressource locator, ie. is an instruction on how to find a specific ressource.

Many URL types share the form of HTTP URLs (eg. FTP, HTTPS etc), which is

{protocol}://{hostname}[:port][/path]

where path can be quite everything, including things with colons; normally you'd see these being URL-encoded (the stuff with % in URLs). Why don't you simply try out; the full syntax is documented in RFC 3986.

edited Oct 07 '21 at 06:31

Community

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answered Feb 19 '15 at 15:20

Marcus Müller

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@Muller thanks. Yes I referred the rfc 3986. The colon is part of Reserved Characters. My doubt was the colons which are part of "/path" must be percent-encoded or it can allow those. – Surya Feb 20 '15 at 10:11

Julian Reschke · Answer 2 · 2015-02-19T17:24:00.730

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The answer is: yes. And as Marcus said: the specs are out there.

edited Feb 19 '15 at 17:24

answered Feb 19 '15 at 16:19

Julian Reschke

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Can URL contain colons to represent a value other than port number

Sample URL

2 Answers2