Return to Question

In the comments on StackOverflow, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inotify was misparsed to include the trailing angle bracket. Also there was a semi-colon after it for some reason. See my comment below for an example.

In RFC 3986 Appendix C. Delimiting a URI in Context, three ways are suggested to indicate that a bit of text is a URL.

1. Angle brackets like <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inotify>
2. Quotes like "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inotify"
3. Whitespace like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inotify

Angle brackets are "especially recommended" in the RFC.

Markdown syntax also automatically links angle brackets and SO's editing help mentions it. The comment formatting help doesn't say comments auto-link differently. Comments do auto-link, why do it different?

Thanks for looking. I know free-form URL parsing is a pain, I maintain a library myself.

UPDATE: As you can see in this example -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inotify -- the posting grammar knows how to deal with URLs in angle brackets. Why not in comments? They both do auto-linking. Unless there's some other benefit to the user they should do them the same to avoid confusion. This allows users to learn just ONE set of quirks, not two.

In the comments on StackOverflow, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inotify was misparsed to include the trailing angle bracket. Also there was a semi-colon after it for some reason. See my comment below for an example.

In RFC 3986 Appendix C. Delimiting a URI in Context, three ways are suggested to indicate that a bit of text is a URL.

1. Angle brackets like <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inotify>
2. Quotes like "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inotify"
3. Whitespace like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inotify

Angle brackets are "especially recommended" in the RFC.

Markdown syntax also automatically links angle brackets and SO's editing help mentions it. The comment formatting help doesn't say comments auto-link differently. Comments do auto-link, why do it different?

Thanks for looking. I know free-form URL parsing is a pain, I maintain a library myself.

UPDATE: As you can see in this example -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inotify -- the posting grammar knows how to deal with URLs in angle brackets. Why not in comments? They both do auto-linking. Unless there's some other benefit to the user they should do them the same to avoid confusion. This allows users to learn just ONE set of quirks, not two.

In the comments on StackOverflow, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inotify was misparsed to include the trailing angle bracket. Also there was a semi-colon after it for some reason. See my comment below for an example.

In RFC 3986 Appendix C. Delimiting a URI in Context, three ways are suggested to indicate that a bit of text is a URL.

1. Angle brackets like <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inotify>
2. Quotes like "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inotify"
3. Whitespace like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inotify

Angle brackets are "especially recommended" in the RFC.

Markdown syntax also automatically links angle brackets and SO's editing help mentions it. The comment formatting help doesn't say comments auto-link differently. Comments do auto-link, why do it different?

Thanks for looking. I know free-form URL parsing is a pain, I maintain a library myself.

UPDATE: As you can see in this example -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inotify -- the posting grammar knows how to deal with URLs in angle brackets. Why not in comments? They both do auto-linking. Unless there's some other benefit to the user they should do them the same to avoid confusion. This allows users to learn just ONE set of quirks, not two.

In the comments on StackOverflow, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inotify was misparsed to include the trailing angle bracket. Also there was a semi-colon after it for some reason. See my comment below for an example.

In RFC 3986 Appendix C. Delimiting a URI in Context, three ways are suggested to indicate that a bit of text is a URL.

1. Angle brackets like <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inotify>
2. Quotes like "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inotify"
3. Whitespace like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inotify

Angle brackets are "especially recommended" in the RFC.

Markdown syntax also automatically links angle brackets and SO's editing help mentions it. The comment formatting help doesn't say comments auto-link differently. Comments do auto-link, why do it different?

Thanks for looking. I know free-form URL parsing is a pain, I maintain a library myself.

UPDATE: As you can see in this example -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inotify -- the posting grammar knows how to deal with URLs in angle brackets. Why not in comments? They both do auto-linking. Unless there's some other benefit to the user they should do them the same to avoid confusion. This allows users to learn just ONE set of quirks, not two.

In the comments on StackOverflow, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inotify was misparsed to include the trailing angle bracket. Also there was a semi-colon after it for some reason. See my comment below for an example.

In RFC 3986 Appendix C. Delimiting a URI in Context, three ways are suggested to indicate that a bit of text is a URL.

1. Angle brackets like <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inotify>
2. Quotes like "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inotify"
3. Whitespace like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inotify

Angle brackets are "especially recommended" in the RFC.

Markdown syntax also automatically links angle brackets and SO's editing help mentions it.

Thanks for looking. I know free-form URL parsing is a pain, I maintain a library myself.

UPDATE: As you can see in this example -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inotify -- the posting grammar knows how to deal with URLs in angle brackets. Why not in comments? They both do auto-linking. Unless there's some other benefit to the user they should do them the same to avoid confusion. This allows users to learn just ONE set of quirks, not two.

In the comments on StackOverflow, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inotify was misparsed to include the trailing angle bracket. Also there was a semi-colon after it for some reason. See my comment below for an example.

In RFC 3986 Appendix C. Delimiting a URI in Context, three ways are suggested to indicate that a bit of text is a URL.

1. Angle brackets like <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inotify>
2. Quotes like "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inotify"
3. Whitespace like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inotify

Angle brackets are "especially recommended" in the RFC.

Markdown syntax also automatically links angle brackets and SO's editing help mentions it. The comment formatting help doesn't say comments auto-link differently. Comments do auto-link, why do it different?

Thanks for looking. I know free-form URL parsing is a pain, I maintain a library myself.

UPDATE: As you can see in this example -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inotify -- the posting grammar knows how to deal with URLs in angle brackets. Why not in comments? They both do auto-linking. Unless there's some other benefit to the user they should do them the same to avoid confusion. This allows users to learn just ONE set of quirks, not two.