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When crafting this question about "404-page", I've tried give an example of not-found-page by using big question ID, for example this bare URL https://serverfault.com/questions/5321111111. When I submit the question, the submit button reported an error with message "An error occurred submitting the question." Instead telling me about what's wrong with my question, the page tells me nothing.

Looking through HTTP status code, I see "302 Found" status-code followed by "500 Internal Server Error" like below.

HTTP status code

Looks like Markdown parser for bare-URL was misbehaving in this case.

Why did meta.SE dislike my bare URL?

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    My guess: it tried to fetch the title of question, and did not handle the failure properly. Does this happen for all non-existent question numbers, or just for very long ones?
    – user259867
    Commented Feb 9, 2015 at 3:56
  • Hi, I've tried to put the example of removed links by editing my question. It seems the system gladly accept it.
    – masegaloeh
    Commented Feb 9, 2015 at 4:03
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    @famous hey, at least they are not trying to handle the success ;).
    – Braiam
    Commented Feb 10, 2015 at 4:25
  • @FamousBlueRaincoat Hmm, I'm curious why they need to fetch the title of the links?
    – masegaloeh
    Commented Feb 10, 2015 at 4:48
  • To have links with informative titles instead of bare URL, I suppose.
    – user259867
    Commented Feb 10, 2015 at 4:50
  • all the id's are 32-bit ints, and will be 32-bit until we start getting close to the Int32.MaxValue on a site (presumably Stack Overflow)
    – m0sa
    Commented Feb 12, 2015 at 9:23
  • @m0sa At least the system can tell the user about this 'error'. At first, I'm just puzzled why I can't submit the question. There are no error message mentioned. After several try and error, finally I can submit it after 'clean' the links.
    – masegaloeh
    Commented Feb 12, 2015 at 9:28
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    the error is caused by an exception when parsing the big number as an 32-bit int. Best case I can do is make it consistent with the markdown preview so it shows up as a raw URL link.
    – m0sa
    Commented Feb 12, 2015 at 9:41

2 Answers 2

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Well, the maximum ID seems to be "2147483647", after which you can't submit the post (answer or question equally) with a bare link, which would resolve into the post title. Apparently Stack Exchange isn't using 64-bits systems (oh, the horror!) or there's an integer overflow somewhere.

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After build rev 2015.2.12.3070 on meta, 2015.2.12.2293 on sites, you will get a bare URL link, even for a question/post URL with an ill-formatted id.

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    Int32.TryParse instead of Int32.Parse?? ;)
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Feb 12, 2015 at 9:52
  • guilty as charged
    – m0sa
    Commented Feb 12, 2015 at 10:02

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