url

URL
    n 1: the address of a web page on the world wide web [syn:
         {URL}, {uniform resource locator}, {universal resource
         locator}]
    

URL
 /U.R.L/, /erl/, n.

   Uniform Resource Locator, an address widget that identifies a document
   or resource on the World Wide Web. This entry is here primarily to
   record the fact that the term is commonly pronounced both /erl/, and
   /U-R-L/ (the latter predominates in more formal contexts).
    

Uniform Resource Locator
Uniform Resource Locater
Universal Resource Locator
URL
web address

   <World-Wide Web> (URL, previously "Universal") A {standard}
   way of specifying the location of an object, typically a {web
   page}, on the {Internet}.  Other types of object are described
   below.  URLs are the form of address used on the {World-Wide
   Web}.  They are used in {HTML} documents to specify the target
   of a {hyperlink} which is often another HTML document
   (possibly stored on another computer).

   Here are some example URLs:

    http://w3.org/default.html
    http://acme.co.uk:8080/images/map.gif
    http://foldoc.org/?Uniform+Resource+Locator
    http://w3.org/default.html#Introduction
    ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/mirrors/msdos/graphics/gifkit.zip
    ftp://spy:[email protected]/pub/topsecret/weapon.tgz
    mailto:[email protected]
    news:alt.hypertext
    telnet://dra.com

   The part before the first colon specifies the access scheme or
   {protocol}.  Commonly implemented schemes include: {ftp},
   {http} (World-Wide Web), {gopher} or {WAIS}.  The "file"
   scheme should only be used to refer to a file on the same
   host.  Other less commonly used schemes include {news},
   {telnet} or mailto ({e-mail}).

   The part after the colon is interpreted according to the
   access scheme.  In general, two slashes after the colon
   introduce a {hostname} (host:port is also valid, or for {FTP}
   user:passwd@host or user@host).  The {port} number is usually
   omitted and defaults to the standard port for the scheme,
   e.g. port 80 for HTTP.

   For an HTTP or FTP URL the next part is a {pathname} which is
   usually related to the pathname of a file on the server.  The
   file can contain any type of data but only certain types are
   interpreted directly by most {browsers}.  These include {HTML}
   and images in {gif} or {jpeg} format.  The file's type is
   given by a {MIME} type in the HTTP headers returned by the
   server, e.g. "text/html", "image/gif", and is usually also
   indicated by its {filename extension}.  A file whose type is
   not recognised directly by the browser may be passed to an
   external "viewer" {application}, e.g. a sound player.

   The last (optional) part of the URL may be a query string
   preceded by "?" or a "fragment identifier" preceded by "#".
   The later indicates a particular position within the specified
   document.

   Only alphanumerics, reserved characters (:/?#"<>%+) used for
   their reserved purposes and "$", "-", "_", ".", "&", "+" are
   safe and may be transmitted unencoded.  Other characters are
   encoded as a "%" followed by two {hexadecimal} digits.  Space
   may also be encoded as "+".  Standard {SGML} "&<name>;"
   character entity encodings (e.g. "&eacute;") are also accepted
   when URLs are embedded in HTML.  The terminating semicolon may
   be omitted if &<name> is followed by a non-letter character.

   The authoritative W3C URL specification
   (http://w3.org/hypertext/WWW/Addressing/Addressing.html).

   (2000-02-17)
    

URL
       Uniform Resource Locator (WWW, RFC 1738)