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BUG MIGRATED FROM SOURCEFORGE
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=583234&group_id=34373&atid=411192
Originally submitted by Nobody/Anonymous - nobody  2002-07-18 08:48


When a URL contains another full and unescaped URL
within its query string, it is correctly parsed as a
single big URL when placed directly into the text.

However, if put in brackets as [URL] or [URL
description], the URL-in-a-bracket parsing breaks. The
brackets, URL, and description appear as plain text,
and the sub-URL gets reparsed as a standalone hyperlink.

Example:
http://www.unausa.org/newindex.asp?place=http://www.unausa.org/programs/mun.asp
appears correctly as a big link to the correct, full URL.

[http://www.unausa.org/newindex.asp?place=http://www.unausa.org/programs/mun.asp]
should display as "[1]" being a link, but instead
appears with brackets and full URL intact as text, but
the portion "http://www.unausa.org/programs/mun.asp" is
a linked URL.


Workaround: Replacing the : with %3A fixes the parsing
problem. (Of course, in this particular case only the
shorter URL is actually needed, as it will be
dynamically redirected to the longer URL.)

------------------------- Additional comments ------------------------
Date: 2002-07-19 21:06
Sender: SF user lcrocker

I'm lowering the priority on this since there's an easy 
workaround, and would require messing with some pretty 
stable and pretty important code, but it would be nice,
so I'll leave it open.

-------------------------------------------------
Date: 2002-07-30 20:44
Sender: SF user vibber

I'm raising the priority because I've come across a case the
workaround doesn't work for.

(See http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Wikipedia%3AVillage_pump )

If the main URL is http and the sub-URL is *ftp*, the %3A
fix doesn't work: all ftp URLs are parsed /after/ all http
URLs, and somehow the %3A gets transformed back into a : in
the 'title' field of the link... this triggers the ftp
URL-checker, so:

[http://promo.net/cgi-promo/pg/t9.cgi?entry=120&full=yes&
ftpsite=ftp%3A//ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/
Gutenberg text]

is parsed into the horrific:

<a
href='http://promo.net/cgi-promo/pg/t9.cgi?entry=120&full=yes
&ftpsite=ftp%3A//ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/'
class='external'
title="http://promo.net/cgi-promo/pg/t9.cgi?entry=120&am
p;full=yes&ftpsite=<a
href="ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/
class='external'
title="ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/">
ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/</a>">Gu
tenberg
text</a>

Simple partial fix would be to *not* unescape URL-encoded
bytes when producing the 'title' attribute for the link, so
it remains %3A and doesn't trigger the link converter.
Alternatively, find a way to not check for URLs inside HTML
tags.
-------------------------------------------------
Date: 2003-01-23 00:02
Sender: SF user nichtich

URLs inside all kind of links should be treated as text.

For instance:

[[Sandbox|http://de.wikipedia.org]]

produces a link to http://de.wikipedia.org and not to 
[[Sandbox]] !
-------------------------------------------------
Date: 2003-03-17 07:44
Sender: nobody
Logged In: NO 

Wiki has other problems dealing with URLs that have certain characters
in it like '*' or if the URL contains part of another URL.
Examples:

http://example.com/*/foo/bar
[http://example.com/redir/http://www.prwatch.org some link]

As the original bug report indicated, URL escaping can be used
as a
workaround:

http://example.com/%2A/foo/bar
[http://example.com/redir/%68ttp://www.prwatch.org some link]

--Sheldon Rampton (sheldon.rampton@verizon.net)
-------------------------------------------------
Date: 2004-08-07 20:30
Sender: SF user timstarling

All of these problems are now fixed except nichtich's. I also 
added URL-encoding, it seemed to me to be more user-
friendly to allow users to paste URLs in directly. Brion's 
example:

[http://promo.net/cgi-promo/pg/t9.cgi?
entry=120&full=yes&
ftpsite=ftp%3A//ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/
Gutenberg text]

This needs to become:

[http://promo.net/cgi-promo/pg/t9.cgi?
entry=120&full=yes&ftpsite=ftp%
3A//ibiblio.org/pub/docs/books/gutenberg/ Gutenberg text]

This is not backwards-compatible so may require automated 
conversion.