From: Jasper St. Pierre <jstpierre@mecheye.net>
Date: Fri, 23 Jul 2010 14:25:57 GMT
Subject: Re: URL decoding changed semantics of + in URLs
Message-ID: <AANLkTikRFCmE8BeB6G107cz6ZPxWtq=j-PmmX59pR5zj@mail.gmail.com>
In-Reply-To: <AANLkTinsixPihZRtduuB_0puX_ucC0HYqHPU0UJMX2e-@mail.gmail.com>

Yep. http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2396.txt defines '+' as a reserved character,
but doesn't give a purpose for it. www-form-encoded replaces space with '+'
but in a URL it can mean anything it wants.

On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 10:10 AM, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason
<avarab@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 13:18, Thomas Rast <trast@student.ethz.ch> wrote:
>
>> doesn't say much about + and the only escaping defined is the usual
>> %xx style.  So is there a standard that mandates this, or was it just
>> a well-meaning but unnecessary backwards incompatible change?
>
> + and %20 are as far as I know only interchangable in *query strings*,
> so having to clone 'git://git.gnome.org/gtk%2B' where you could
> previously clone 'git://git.gnome.org/gtk+' is a bug. Git shouldn't be
> changing that + to a %20.
>
> I haven't followed why we need to escape + to %20 at all, even in the
> query string. E.g. curl(1) doesn't do that before sending requests to
> Apache, which can handle either one. The + v.s. %20 duality is always
> handled at the server AFAIK.
>