L A Walsh <[email protected]> writes: > if wget gets leading spaces in a URL, it complains: > " http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/v2.30: Scheme > missing." > > Isn't it required for a web client to strip leading spaces from > URLs?
Strictly speaking, no, because a URL cannot contain spaces, leading or otherwise. Generally, Web browsers strip leading and trailing spaces to make it easier to cut-and-paste links into their location bars, but that is outside the formality of URLs. In addition, some browsers will automatically %-escape any character in a purported URL that isn't allowed in URLs, which makes it easier for people to circulated purported URLs that contain invalid characters. But it seems to me that it is better-defined and safer -- and more in the Un*x tradition -- to have wget simply give an error if the argument string isn't a valid URL. Dale
