4. URI References

   The term "URI-reference" is used here to denote the common usage of a
   resource identifier.  A URI reference may be absolute or relative,
   and may have additional information attached in the form of a
   fragment identifier.  However, "the URI" that results from such a
   reference includes only the absolute URI after the fragment
   identifier (if any) is removed and after any relative URI is resolved
   to its absolute form.  Although it is possible to limit the
   discussion of URI syntax and semantics to that of the absolute
   result, most usage of URI is within general URI references, and it is
   impossible to obtain the URI from such a reference without also
   parsing the fragment and resolving the relative form.

      URI-reference = [ absoluteURI | relativeURI ] [ "#" fragment ]

   The syntax for relative URI is a shortened form of that for absolute
   URI, where some prefix of the URI is missing and certain path
   components ("." and "..") have a special meaning when, and only when,
   interpreting a relative path.  The relative URI syntax is defined in
   Section 5.

4.1. Fragment Identifier

   When a URI reference is used to perform a retrieval action on the
   identified resource, the optional fragment identifier, separated from
   the URI by a crosshatch ("#") character, consists of additional
   reference information to be interpreted by the user agent after the
   retrieval action has been successfully completed.  As such, it is not
   part of a URI, but is often used in conjunction with a URI.

      fragment      = *uric

   The semantics of a fragment identifier is a property of the data
   resulting from a retrieval action, regardless of the type of URI used
   in the reference.  Therefore, the format and interpretation of
   fragment identifiers is dependent on the media type [RFC2046] of the
   retrieval result.  The character restrictions described in Section 2




 
RFC 2396                   URI Generic Syntax                August 1998


   for URI also apply to the fragment in a URI-reference.  Individual
   media types may define additional restrictions or structure within
   the fragment for specifying different types of "partial views" that
   can be identified within that media type.

   A fragment identifier is only meaningful when a URI reference is
   intended for retrieval and the result of that retrieval is a document
   for which the identified fragment is consistently defined.

4.2. Same-document References

   A URI reference that does not contain a URI is a reference to the
   current document.  In other words, an empty URI reference within a
   document is interpreted as a reference to the start of that document,
   and a reference containing only a fragment identifier is a reference
   to the identified fragment of that document.  Traversal of such a
   reference should not result in an additional retrieval action.
   However, if the URI reference occurs in a context that is always
   intended to result in a new request, as in the case of HTML's FORM
   element, then an empty URI reference represents the base URI of the
   current document and should be replaced by that URI when transformed
   into a request.

4.3. Parsing a URI Reference

   A URI reference is typically parsed according to the four main
   components and fragment identifier in order to determine what
   components are present and whether the reference is relative or
   absolute.  The individual components are then parsed for their
   subparts and, if not opaque, to verify their validity.

   Although the BNF defines what is allowed in each component, it is
   ambiguous in terms of differentiating between an authority component
   and a path component that begins with two slash characters.  The
   greedy algorithm is used for disambiguation: the left-most matching
   rule soaks up as much of the URI reference string as it is capable of
   matching.  In other words, the authority component wins.

   Readers familiar with regular expressions should see Appendix B for a
   concrete parsing example and test oracle.

5. Relative URI References

   It is often the case that a group or "tree" of documents has been
   constructed to serve a common purpose; the vast majority of URI in
   these documents point to resources within the tree rather than






 
RFC 2396                   URI Generic Syntax                August 1998