Double // in URL

[grandpa]

Would someone try to explain the purpose or intent of a URL that looks like this:

http://www.example.com//page.html

It just looks malformed to me, but it works. [cynic] I suspect a more sinister purpose.[/cynic]

[sonjay]

I just tested it on one of my sites .... and yeah, oddly, it works.

I'd guess a typo.

[sned]

Interesting seems that www.example.com./page.htm works too.

[grandpa]

I've looked over the rest of thier site and that was the only page like that. Was wondering if it might have been set up that way to stop PR or some such silliness, but it does appear to be nothing more than a typo.

[PhraSEOlogy]

Grandpa,

I generate dynamic URLs using perl and if you get your concatenation messed up - you can often end up with too many //
nothing sinister - just sloppy programming.

[g1smd]

I see that in some category paths at dmoz.org from time to time.

If you see any like that there, please report them back to editors or staff.

[drbrain]

sned:

All domain names end in a '.', but software is friendly to you and lets you drop it. The '.' is used to distinguish between a full domain name and a domain name using a search prefix.

[ergophobe]

I suspect that like a previous poster said, there is an error in the logic of their script.

That said, it is perfectly legal. Some style manuals recommend printing urls like this and put the linebreaks between the slashes as it makes it easier for people to reconstruct the url.

Note that the 15th edition of the CMS does not advise this.

Tom