It’s just data

Historical Perspective

zekel: No one had been quite as abused as the the little file: URL.  This URL was special because we had always used files and DOS paths (and no one at the time knew about path canonicalization attacks), everyone was quite sure what they looked like , acted like, and even tasted like.  It didn’t help that the file: protocol remained in RFC limbo as a platform/OS specific protocol.  So the browser and the browser’s little friends would take turns dressing a DOS path like an URL in a pink bunny suit and undressing the URL with a pair of rusty scissors, pretending it was the same DOS path they started with.  Only the simplest of URLs was able to withstand this abuse, and it soon became clear that something would have to be done, lest the little file: URLs go off on their own and be lost forever. [via Joshua Allen]

And what of file: urls of the form file:///c|/windows/My%20Documents%20100%2520/foo.txt ?

The linked article doesn’t seem to address those.

Posted by Bob Aman at

Free Associations : The Bizarre and Unhappy Story of 'file:' URLs

Free Associations : The Bizarre and Unhappy Story of ‘file:’ URLs (via Sam Ruby)....

Excerpt from Keith's Weblog at

Sam Ruby: Historical Perspective

hmm... some change in IE here?...

Excerpt from del.icio.us/tag/w3c at

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