Problem with posting links

[Paul Berger (Canada)]

Some time ago I had posted a link to a document that is on a Google drive but I did not look not it further at the time as other way of getting to the document where posted. This was in the thread "HP Nano Processor" recently there was a new post by someone looking for this document and much to my surprise when I found the link I had posted on a groups.io forum to the same document the link still worked so I got to wondering why the one I posted in the thread did not work.

What I found is that when posting the link here whatever formats the link was inserting 3 unprintable characters into the link, I discovered this by coping the link from the tread here and the link from groups.io into a hex editor and there the three extra characters appear.

This is the link I deliberately left the "https://" in hopes that the editor would leave it alone

"drive.google.com/folderview?id=0BwZMBH1UdIEYfkZsMllIRFN2TlowY0JzLXNGbnFtMGhyVDNKUHU0Y3VwREVmVWVfb​FdEelk&usp=sharing"

the three characters are inserted right after ...mVWVfb

This is the original link

Code:

00000000 68 74 74 70 73 3A 2F 2F 64 72 69 76 65 2E 67 6F https://drive.go
00000010 6F 67 6C 65 2E 63 6F 6D 2F 66 6F 6C 64 65 72 76 ogle.com/folderv
00000020 69 65 77 3F 69 64 3D 30 42 77 5A 4D 42 48 31 55 iew?id=0BwZMBH1U
00000030 64 49 45 59 66 6B 5A 73 4D 6C 6C 49 52 46 4E 32 dIEYfkZsMllIRFN2
00000040 54 6C 6F 77 59 30 4A 7A 4C 58 4E 47 62 6E 46 74 TlowY0JzLXNGbnFt
00000050 4D 47 68 79 56 44 4E 4B 55 48 55 30 59 33 56 77 MGhyVDNKUHU0Y3Vw
00000060 52 45 56 6D 56 57 56 66 62 46 64 45 65 6C 6B 26 REVmVWVfbFdEelk&
00000070 75 73 70 3D 73 68 61 72 69 6E 67 20 20 20 20 20 usp=sharing

This is the mangled link

Code:

00000000 68 74 74 70 73 3A 2F 2F 64 72 69 76 65 2E 67 6F https://drive.go
00000010 6F 67 6C 65 2E 63 6F 6D 2F 66 6F 6C 64 65 72 76 ogle.com/folderv
00000020 69 65 77 3F 69 64 3D 30 42 77 5A 4D 42 48 31 55 iew?id=0BwZMBH1U
00000030 64 49 45 59 66 6B 5A 73 4D 6C 6C 49 52 46 4E 32 dIEYfkZsMllIRFN2
00000040 54 6C 6F 77 59 30 4A 7A 4C 58 4E 47 62 6E 46 74 TlowY0JzLXNGbnFt
00000050 4D 47 68 79 56 44 4E 4B 55 48 55 30 59 33 56 77 MGhyVDNKUHU0Y3Vw
00000060 52 45 56 6D 56 57 56 66 62 25 45 32 25 38 30 25 REVmVWVfb%E2%80%
00000070 38 42 46 64 45 65 6C 6B 26 75 73 70 3D 73 68 61 8BFdEelk&usp=sha
00000080 72 69 6E 67 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 20 ring

Note the extra byte between 0x6A and 0x71.

Paul.

[Thomas Okken]

%E2%80%8B is Unicode U+200B, "zero width space."
No clue why that would be getting inserted...

[SammysHP]

Probably to break long words. A feature of the forum software?

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzab​cdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcd​efghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdef​ghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

Yes, they are inserted after every 80 characters.

[Sylvain Cote]

Yep! that's a problem, in the meantime you can place it within a code block, you loose the automatic link but at least you get the correct url.

Code:

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0BwZMBH1UdIEYfkZsMllIRFN2TlowY0JzLXNGbnFtMGhyVDNKUHU0Y3VwREVmVWVfb​FdEelk&usp=sharing

[Craig Bladow]

This issue also occurs when sending PMs. I've confirmed that Sylvain's code block solution works around the issue in PMs.