[KLUG Members] URI v URL

[Andrew Thompson]

On Thu, 2004-08-05 at 16:10, Adam Tauno Williams wrote:
> > I occasionally run across the acronym 'URI'. Is a URI the same as a URL or
> > something different?
> 
> Once upon a time they were technically different;  but now they are at least
> equivalent if not equal.  Even IANA documents now use the terms interchangably
> in published documents.
> 
> URI = Uniform Resource Identifiers
> URL = Uniform Resource Locators
> 
> The long tedious history can be found here - http://www.w3.org/Addressing/

I believe the basic idea is that, while a URI is meant to simply
identify a resource (such as a file) availalbe 'somewhere', a URL is
specifically intended to identify a resource's _location_. Thence comes
the standard 'path-to-file' format of URLs, which a URI might not be
required to follow at all. In short, all URLs are URIs, but not all URIs
are URLs. So far, I haven't run across many that weren't, though.

-- 
Andrew Thompson <tempes at ameritech.net>
The Imagerie