& in URLS for HTML validation

thing2b · 06-27-2004, 08:47 PM

I was just validating my webpage with http://validator.w3.org as HTML 4.01 Transitional, and I got an error saying I have unencoded ampersands in my URLs. How many people use unencoded ampersands for their urls and how many encoded them? Does it matter?

Jazzee · 06-27-2004, 09:46 PM

I don't think people generally put those in URLs at all.

FGTH · 06-28-2004, 05:20 AM

Most coders I know use ampersands in meta content to reduce the number of characters.

However, w3c compliancy requires using "&" in place of "&" which defeats the purpose (having less characters for "and").

So use "and" instead of "&".

If you don't care about following w3c validation regarding meta content, e.g. the title, description, etc..., then use "&" in meta content.

Some browsers display "&" correctly in the description, others do not.

I prefer using "and" to avoid these potential problems.

Jazzee · 06-28-2004, 09:42 AM

I think he was asking about URLs, not meta tags.

FGTH · 06-28-2004, 10:01 AM

Whoops... you're right Jazzz...

In some instances, such as cgi/perl scripts contained in URIs, the ampersand does cause problems during w3c validation.

You can work around this by including the links within javascript.