614201 - Escape \ (backslash character) for copy-and-paste

Status: RESOLVED INACTIVE

(Firefox :: Address Bar, defect)

Description

[Ed Avis]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:2.0b7) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0b7
Build Identifier: 4.07b7 (the Help | About box does not show a build identifier)

Recent versions of Firefox unescape URIs shown in the address bar.  So for example
if you browse to http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=a%5Cb the escape sequence %5C
will be converted to \ to display in the address bar.  This is great, but it can
cause problems when cutting and pasting URIs into other programs.

For example, since \ is not a legal character in URIs, if you include the
unescaped URI in a plain text mail message then the client program may not
highlight the entire URI as a clickable link.  Mail clients and other text-
based systems have to use heuristics and guesses to see what is a URI and where
it ends, and it's not unreasonable for them to decide that when a non-legal
character is seen it cannot be part of the URI.

Suggested fix: although displaying an unescaped version in the address bar is
great, when copying the URI to the clipboard the canonical, escaped version
should be copied.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Enter a URI containing a %5C escape or other escape of non-URI-legal character.
2. The unescaped version appears in the address bar.
3. Select the text in the address bar, copy to clipboard, paste into other app.
Actual Results:  
An unescaped version is pasted, containing \ or other non-URI-legal character.

Expected Results:  
The original escaped version should be pasted.

"Be conservative in what you do, be liberal in what you accept from others."

Comment 1

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

I can confirm this with Seamonkey trunk (!) and FF 4b07
It more ugly with spaces and i get problems with copy+paste URLs from SUMO.

Example: http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Safe%20Mode

Comment 2

[juan becerra [:juanb]]

Aravind, can you check if this happens in 3.5.x or 3.6? If not could you find a regression range in Fx4?

Comment 3

[Philip Chee]

The urlbar binding method _getSelectedValueForClipboard() calls contentAreaUtils->makeURI() which calls nsIIOService->newURI().

Spaces are url encoded. Cutting and pasting the url in Comment 1 into a text editor give me: http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=a%20b

But I see the problem with the backslash.

Comment 4

[Philip Chee]

Backslash behaviour is identical in Firefox 3.6.

Comment 5

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

The space issue with the safemode URL is now fixed

Comment 6

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to comment #5)
> The space issue with the safemode URL is now fixed

It wasn't even broken...

So, is \ actually illegal for URIs?

Comment 7

[Matthias Versen [:Matti]]

A backslash "\" is an unsafe char based on RFC1738.
I don't know if that RFC is now obsolete or not, there is no unsafe char section in rfc3986

>Other characters are unsafe because
>gateways and other transport agents are known to sometimes modify
>such characters. These characters are "{", "}", "|", "\", "^", "~",
>"[", "]", and "`".
>
>All unsafe characters must always be encoded within a URL.

Comment 8

[Ed Avis]

My reading of RFC3986 is that \ is still just as much a disallowed character
in URIs, since it does not appear in the grammar.

Comment 9

[aravindm]

Following is noticed in FF 3.5,3.6 and 4.x beta versions

%20:SPACE: unescaped in address bar,copy/paste shows escaped char
%3c: Less Than: unescaped in address bar,copy/paste shows escaped char
%3e:Greater Than: unescaped in address bar,copy/paste shows escaped char
%23b:Hash: escaped sequence is present in address bar. copy/paste shows escaped sequence
%5c:Backslash:unescaped sequence appears in address bar,copy/paste shows unescaped sequence

Checked the behavior on:

Internet Explorer 8: Unescaped chars appear in address bar,copy/paste to other app shows unescaped chars

Google Chrome: Few chars are escaped and few are not in address bar.

Comment 10

[Ed Avis]

Just to update this, since it was originally filed against a long-superseded Firefox version:

I have re-tested this with Firefox 13 and the behaviour is the same.  The 'unescaped' URI including non-URI characters such as \ is copied to the clipboard.

Comment 11

[eda]

Note that this is still buggy in Firefox 45.

Comment 12

[BMO Automation]

Per policy at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Bug_Triage/Projects/Bug_Handling/Bug_Husbandry#Inactive_Bugs. If this bug is not an enhancement request or a bug not present in a supported release of Firefox, then it may be reopened.