

difference between URI and URL (was: Question)

From: Danyel Ceccaldi <dceccald@elaine.crcg.edu>
Date: Wed, 27 Sep 1995 14:30:00 -0400
Message-Id: <9509271830.AA12508@hornbill.crcg.edu>
To: hazewink@cs.utwente.nl
Cc: http-wg%cuckoo.hpl.hp.com@hplb.hpl.hp.com
Hi Harrie,

Here is my current information about it. It can differ
from reality because things are changing too fast, but
I think most of the information is correct.

>Is there a difference between the URI and URL?

>If yes, what is that difference?
The first difference, which is a hint for the different meaning,
is what it stands for:

URI - Uniform Resource Identifier

URL - Uniform Resource Locator

A URI _identifies_ a resource by meta-information of any kind.

A URL _locates_ a resource on the net, which means if you have
a URL and the appropriate protocol you can retrieve the resource.

There are many different URI, e.g.:
- URL Uniform Resource Locator
- URC Uniform Resource Characteristics
- URN Uniform Resource Names

One characteristic of a URI is, that it gives information about
exactly one resource. Another is there can be more than one URI
describing the same resource.

That was the theory, here is an example:

URI: <URL:http://www.w3.org>
URI: <URL:http://www.w3.org/>

All lines describing the same resource (the URL describes the location).

Hope that helps.
For details perform a netsearch (and the W3C-Server is always a good choice
of a source for information related to the WWW).

Received on Wednesday, 27 September 1995 10:32:29 UTC
