Hi Alex, On Fri, 22 Jan 2021 at 14:00, Alejandro Colomar (man-pages) <alx.manpages@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Hi all, > > Why do some pages use \:/ for the slash in the path part of a URL, but > some others don't, and just use /? > > Moreover, why do the former use \:/ only for the path, but not for the > protocol? > > $ grep -n '^\.UR' man7/uri.7; > 173:.UR http://www.w3.org\:/CGI > 243:.UR http://www.ietf.org\:/rfc\:/rfc1036.txt > 383:.UR http://www.ietf.org\:/rfc\:/rfc2255.txt > 396:.UR http://www.ietf.org\:/rfc\:/rfc2253.txt > 414:.UR http://www.ietf.org\:/rfc\:/rfc2254.txt > 456:.UR http://www.ietf.org\:/rfc\:/rfc1625.txt > 555:.UR > http://www.fwi.uva.nl\:/\(times\:/jargon\:/h\:/HackerWritingStyle.html > 583:.UR http://www.ietf.org\:/rfc\:/rfc2396.txt > 586:.UR http://www.w3.org\:/TR\:/REC\-html40 > 707:.UR http://www.ietf.org\:/rfc\:/rfc2255.txt > $ > > $ grep -Inr '^\.UR' man? \ > |grep -c '\\:/'; > 56 > $ > > $ grep -Inr '^\.UR' man? \ > |grep -c -v '\\:/'; > 41 > $ > > $ grep -Inr '^\.UR' man? \ > |grep '\\:/' \ > |head -n1; > man2/futex.2:1910:.UR > http://kernel.org\:/doc\:/ols\:/2002\:/ols2002\-pages\-479\-495.pdf > $ > > $ grep -Inr '^\.UR' man? \ > |grep -v '\\:/' \ > |head -n1; > man1/memusage.1:206:.UR http://www.gnu.org/software/libc/bugs.html > $ > > What is the correct form? The "\:" is a clue to groff that it can do a line break here if necessary; i.e., it is a recommendation that is a better point to break than, say, in the middle of a word in the URL. Useful especially for long URLs. Cheers, Michael -- Michael Kerrisk Linux man-pages maintainer; http://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/ Linux/UNIX System Programming Training: http://man7.org/training/
