Can a URL contain a semicolon and still be valid?

regex url syntax uri
Vincent picture Vincent · Jul 24, 2009 · Viewed 61.5k times · Source

I am using a regular expression to convert plain text URL to clickable links.

@(https?://([-\w\.]+)+(:\d+)?(/([\w/_\.-]*(\?\S+)?)?)?)@

However, sometimes in the body of the text, URL are enumerated one per line with a semi-colon at the end. The real URL does not contain any ";".

http://www.aaa.org/pressdetail.asp?PRESS_REL_ID=275;
http://www.aaa.org/pressdetail.asp?PRESS_REL_ID=123;
http://www.aaa.org/pressdetail.asp?PRESS_REL_ID=124

Is it permitted to have a semicolon (;) in a URL or can the semicolon be considered a marker of the end of an URL? How would that fit in my regular expression?

Answer

Greg picture Greg · Jul 24, 2009

A semicolon is reserved and should only for its special purpose (which depends on the scheme).

Section 2.2:

Many URL schemes reserve certain characters for a special meaning: their appearance in the scheme-specific part of the URL has a designated semantics. If the character corresponding to an octet is reserved in a scheme, the octet must be encoded. The characters ";", "/", "?", ":", "@", "=" and "&" are the characters which may be reserved for special meaning within a scheme. No other characters may be reserved within a scheme.

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