# HTML link formatting chart?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/html-link-formatting-chart/510879>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [September 20, 2009, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/html-link-formatting-chart/510879 "2009-09-20T21:11:33Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Fubaya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c2a13f/32.png) [@Fubaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fubaya)\
**Post date:** [September 20, 2009, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/html-link-formatting-chart/510879/1 "2009-09-20T21:11:33Z")

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Can someone point me to a chart that shows what all the “%2F” junk in urls like this are:

```auto

http%3A%2F%2Fsomesite.com%2Fgenerate_feed.php%3Fcontent=posts%26f%255B%255D=45

```

The iphone always opens RSS feeds through [reader.mac.com](http://reader.mac.com) using links like that, making it difficult to paste the link into a proper rss reader. I can usually figure out the correct symbols but it pisses me off so I’m going to write a script to clean up links like that and make them readable, I just can’t remember what it’s called to google it.

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**Author:** ![friedo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8edcca/32.png) [@friedo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/friedo)\
**Post date:** [September 20, 2009, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/html-link-formatting-chart/510879/2 "2009-09-20T21:15:00Z")

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[Here ya go](http://www.ascii.cl/).

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**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\
**Post date:** [September 20, 2009, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/html-link-formatting-chart/510879/3 "2009-09-20T21:21:35Z")

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Usually, most of those codes represent blank spaces.

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**Author:** ![Reply](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/reply/32/15952_2.png) [@Reply](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reply)\
**Post date:** [September 20, 2009, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/html-link-formatting-chart/510879/4 "2009-09-20T21:37:22Z")

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Easier to just use a [URL decoder](http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/dencoder/) rather than a manual chart.

Or [TinyURL](http://tinyurl.com).

ETA: Only %20 is a blank space. The others are other symbols used by scripts and parameters, etc.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Fubaya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c2a13f/32.png) [@Fubaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fubaya)\
**Post date:** [September 20, 2009, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/html-link-formatting-chart/510879/5 "2009-09-20T21:38:01Z")

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Thanks. i thought it was something html specific, can’t believe I didn’t notice it was simple hex.