Is the following URL valid?
http://www.example.com/module.php/lib/lib.php
According to http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1738 section the hpath element of an URL can not contain a '.' (period). There is in the above case a '.' after "module" which is not allowed according to RFC1738.
Am I reading the RFC wrong or is this RFC succeed by another RFC? Some other RFC's allows '.' in URLs (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1808).
I don't see where RFC1738 disallows periods (.) in URLs. Here are some excerpts from there:
hpath = hsegment *[ "/" hsegment ]
hsegment = *[ uchar | ";" | ":" | "@" | "&" | "=" ]
uchar = unreserved | escape
unreserved = alpha | digit | safe | extra
safe = "$" | "-" | "_" | "." | "+"
So the answer to your question is: Yes, http://www.example.com/module.php/lib/lib.php is a valid URL.
As others have noted, periods are allowed in URLs, but be careful. If a single or double period is used in part of a URL's path, the browser will treat it as a change in the path, and you may not get the behavior you want.
For example:
www.example.com/foo/./ redirects to www.example.com/foo/www.example.com/foo/../ redirects to www.example.com/Whereas the following will not redirect:
www.example.com/foo/bar.biz/www.example.com/foo/..biz/www.example.com/foo/biz../
Periods are allowed. See section "2.3 Unreserved Characters" in this document: http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3986
"Characters that are allowed in a URI but do not have a reserved purpose are called unreserved. These include uppercase and lowercase letters, decimal digits, hyphen, period, underscore, and tilde".
Nothing wrong with a period in a url. If you look at the makeup in the grammar in the link you provided a period is mentioned via the 'safe' group, which is included via uchar a
Ignore my answer, Adams is better
