URLs

A URL, short for "Uniform Resource Locator", is a way to unambiguously identify the location of a resource on the Internet. Some typical URLs look like:

http://www.javasoft.com/
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=Chumbawamba&btnG=Google+Search
file:///Macintosh%20HD/Java/Docs/JDK%201.1.1%20docs/api/java.net.InetAddress.html#_top_
http://www.macintouch.com:80/newsrecent.shtml
ftp://ftp.info.apple.com/pub/
mailto:elharo@metalab.unc.edu
telnet://utopia.poly.edu

Most URLs can be broken into about five pieces, not all of which are necessarily present in any given URL. These are:

• the protocol
• the host
• the port
• the file
• the fragment identifier (a.k.a. ref, section, or anchor)
• the query string

How do the above URLs split?