U R L H o s p i t a l http://unescape.hereweb.com
URL Hospital
We all know the frustration of receiving an URL which just won't open. Paste it,
retype it, click again, try microwaving it too! but no, it still won't open. One
possible reason why the URL won't open may be that it has suffered truncation.
So, the first step in trying to heal a broken URL is to see how much of it we can
get. Make sure you have all the characters that you can get.
Say the original URL was http://www.docstoc.com/docs/48838395/CAT-CARE-
Caring-for-Furry-Mouse-Traps-aka-House-Cats but what you have now is
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/48838395/CAT-CARE-Caring-for-Furry-Mouse and
if it works no problem. If it doesn't the first attempt should be climbing up the
directory tree. Try http://www.docstoc.com/docs/48838395/ and if doesn't work or
doesn't list the item you want then http://www.docstoc.com/docs/ and finally
http://www.docstoc.com/ Actually in this example the first three URLs of this
paragraph all work!
You might say that it's a rather simple and easily curable situation. It is. But
here is one more URL http://bn.wikipedia.org/wiki/%25E0%25A6%25AA
%25E0%25A7%258D%25E0%25A6%25B0%25E0%25A6%25BF
% 2 5 E 0 % 2 5 A 6 % 2 5 A F % 2 5 E 0 % 2 5 A 6 % 2 5 B C
% 2 5 E 0 % 2 5 A 6 % 2 5 9 9 % 2 5 E 0 % 2 5 A 7 % 2 5 8 D
%25E0%25A6%2595%25E0%25A6%25BE_%25E0%25A6%25AC
%25E0%25A6%25A2%25E0%25A6%25B0%25E0%25A6%25BE This is exactly
the kind of URL folks feel inclined to microwave if they could. However this URL
can be completely recovered. As geeks will tell you URLs sometimes need to be
encoded or decoded or both in a program or script. Notice the literal “%25”
occurring again and again. If you find even one occurrence of it then your URL
is not valid. In fact it is encoded, but while encoded URLs generally work, the
presence of at least one “%25” means that the URL has almost certainly been
encoded twice! All you have to do to make it work is point your browser to
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U R L H o s p i t a l http://unescape.hereweb.com
http://unescape.hereweb.com, hit the clear all button, paste your input and hit
the decode button. The output box will show your URL. This isn't panacea of
course. If your URL was originally truncated as earlier mentioned or if it's
encoded using a deprecated encoding scheme or one not ideal for Internet
addresses then it may still be unrecoverable. But in most cases you will find
that your overencoded URL is back in shape.
But remember that the “%” sign is not your enemy. It is the “%25” literal which
indicates the problem. Once encoded URLs work perfectly well. That is why
they are encoded. The application at http://unescape.hereweb.com just doesn't
give up until it has decoded the input as many times as possible. Also, to
prevent the same problem, it doesn't let you encode an URL which is already
encoded. Thus it is also ideal for encoding local language URLs. If you are in
doubt as to whether your URL is already encoded just try encoding it again.
Here, one is the limit.
This document is in the public domain.
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