Is mailto:hola@correo.jp a valid URL or a valid URI? Or both?
I need to choose a parsing library and I need to know this first in order to choose correctly.
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unor
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Chris Vilches
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Are you aware that these terms are often used synonymously? – unor Sep 10 '17 at 10:04
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@unor `often` means `not always`, in other words, they aren't technically synonymous. My question is about perfect technicalities, not slang that's "often" used. – Chris Vilches Sep 10 '17 at 10:29
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If you follow the contemporary view, the distinction between URI and URL is not useful. It’s recommended to use either URI or URL for everything. In practice, the terms are often used synonymously.
The two organizations mentioned below followed the recommendation to use only one term, but they didn’t use the same.
Quotes and links in this answer.
IETF
It’s a URI.
(According to RFC 6068, which is currently IETF’s spec for the mailto URI scheme, via Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) Schemes.)
A previous RFC has called it URL (RFC 2368).
WHATWG
It’s a URL.
(According to the URL Living Standard.)
