LlEscapeURL

Function notes

To clarify, numbers and ASCII7 alphabetical characters are NOT escaped. If a character requires more then one byte in UTF-8 byte form then it returns multiple "%xx" sequences chained together.

Return value notes

Returns a string that is the escaped/encoded version of url, replacing spaces with "%20" etc. The function will escape any character not in [a-zA-Z0-9] to "%xx" where "xx" is the hexadecimal value of the character in UTF-8 byte form.

Caveats

The function is not appropriate for escaping a url all at once, because the ":" after the protocol, and all of the "/" characters delimiting the various parts, will be escaped. Instead, build the url in parts; escaping parts of the path and query string arguments as needed.

Sample URL: https://sim3015.aditi.lindenlab.com:12043/cap/a7717681-2c04-e4ac-35e3-1f01c9861322/foo/bar?arg=gra

URL part	example
base URL	https://sim3015.aditi.lindenlab.com:12043/cap/a7717681-2c04-e4ac-35e3-1f01c9861322
trailing path	/foo/bar
query string past the first "?" in the URL	arg=gra

Examples

string str = "http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LSL Portal";
 
default
{
    state_entry()
    {
        llOwnerSay("Plain string:\n\t" + str);
        // output: "http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LSL Portal"
 
        llOwnerSay("Escaped string:\n\t" + llEscapeURL(str));
        // output: "http%3A%2F%2Fwiki%2Esecondlife%2Ecom%2Fwiki%2FLSL%20Portal"
 
        llOwnerSay("Escaped string unescaped again:\n\t" + llUnescapeURL( llEscapeURL(str) ));
        // output: "http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LSL Portal"
 
        // because escaping and unescaping are exact opposite
        // and unescaping an escaped string returns the original
 
 
        //  For readability's sake it would make more sense to do:
        llOwnerSay("For readability's sake:\n\t" + "http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/" + llEscapeURL("LSL Portal"));
        // output: "http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/LSL%20Portal"
    }
}

Notes

The SL viewer pretty prints URLs when converting them to clickable links in chat and dialogs. To confirm that a URL was escaped as intended, right-click the URL and copy, then paste to inspect it in the chat bar; or wrap it between "<nolink>...</nolink>"; or examine your chat log in an external editor; or display the string with an alternative function like llSetText.

History

Prior to SL versions 1.19.1.81992, this function was limited to returning a maximum of 254 characters. SVC-470