URL is an acronym for Uniform Resource Locator. Wget recognizes the URL syntax as per RFC1738. This is the most widely used form (square brackets denote optional parts):
http://host[:port]/path ftp://host[:port]/path
You can also encode your username and password within a URL:
ftp://user:password@host/path http://user:password@host/path
Either user or password, or both may be left out. If you leave out either the HTTP username or password, no authentication will be sent. If you leave out the FTP username, `anonymous' will be used. If you leave out the FTP password, your email address will be supplied as a default password.(1)
You can encode unsafe characters in a URL as `%xy', xy
being the hexadecimal representation of the character's ASCII
value. Some common unsafe characters include `%' (quoted as
`%25'), `:' (quoted as `%3A'), and `@' (quoted as
`%40'). Refer to RFC1738 for a comprehensive list of unsafe
characters.
Two alternative variants of URL specification are also supported, because of historical (hysterical?) reasons and their wide-spreadedness.
FTP-only syntax (supported by NcFTP):
host:/dir/file
HTTP-only syntax (introduced by Netscape):
host[:port]/dir/file
These two alternative forms are deprecated, and may cease being supported in the future.
If you do not understand the difference between these notations, or do
not know which one to use, just use the plain ordinary format you use
with your favorite browser, like Lynx or Netscape.
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