Why do URL shorteners use uppercase letters, if using uppercase is discouraged in the path section of a URL?

Asked Mar 25 '15 at 20:58

Active Mar 25 '15 at 20:58

Viewed 884 times

I just read in this SO question about uppercase URLs that it's good practice to avoid uppercase letters in the URL (especially in the path section). However, shorteners like bit.ly produce urls like this:

http://bit.ly/1FVKCd9

(which is incidentally the same question I linked above).

Why is this?

edited May 23 '17 at 11:56

Community

asked Mar 25 '15 at 20:58

Juan Carlos Coto

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They probably are base-64 encoded. – lodo Mar 25 '15 at 21:02
It allows them to use a base 62 alphabet as compared to a base 36 alphabet. This in turn allows them to generate shorter URLs. – user1998698 Mar 25 '15 at 21:07
Both of these should probably be answers - although it doesn't really address the issue of case-sensitive path sections in different OSes. – Juan Carlos Coto Mar 25 '15 at 21:21

Why do URL shorteners use uppercase letters, if using uppercase is discouraged in the path section of a URL?

0 Answers0