Re: Is there something like `file-name-concat', but for urls?

[tomas]

On Tue, Jul 25, 2023 at 08:33:12PM +0200, Emanuel Berg wrote:
> tomas wrote:
> 
> >> BTW thanks for letting me realize I should modernize that,
> >> it is so old https isn't even included [...]
> >
> > Plus URL encoding. Plus deciding in fringe cases whether
> > encoding is in order or not [...]
> 
> How the URL can look is defined by a grammar

Have you read RFC 3986?

> this is
> Computer Science theory of Compiler Design. Because, if we get
> the standard definition, expressed as a grammar, we can not
> only use the correct terminology from there, we can also
> verify if the result URL is valid or not.

No. This is, alas, Computer Tinkering Practice, where RFCs try
as well as they can, to codify existing practice. Some try to
even set up a grammar, often in some EBNF dialect -- but practice
and existing implementations often emerge long before that
grammar was written, shaped by negligence, inexperience, not
seldomly by economical or political interests.

When people, at last, meet at a table to hammer out an RFC,
often they are sent in by companies trying to defend the stakes
they have rammed in the ground.

Once the RFC is out, if, say, Microsoft or Google is doing
something not according to it, you can shout at them until you
are blue in the face. It won't help, anyway.

Sometimes, standards bodies just give up and declare something
as a "living standard", which means "whatever we come up with
this week", as happens to HTML5.

This is, alas, reality, where our "industry" is dominated by
a handful of actors.

Enjoy, nevertheless.

Cheers
-- 
t

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