Source : WordNet®

uniform resource locator
     n : the address of a web page on the world wide web [syn: {URL},
          {universal resource locator}]

Source : Free On-Line Dictionary of Computing

Uniform Resource Locator
     
         (URL, previously "Universal") A {standard}
        way of specifying the location of an object, typically a {web
        page}, on the {Internet}.  Other types of object are described
        below.  URLs are the form of address used on the {World-Wide
        Web}.  They are used in {HTML} documents to specify the target
        of a {hyperlink} which is often another HTML document
        (possibly stored on another computer).
     
        Here are some example URLs:
     
         http://www.w3.org/default.html
         http://www.acme.co.uk:8080/images/map.gif
         http://www.foldoc.org/?Uniform+Resource+Locator
         http://www.w3.org/default.html#Introduction
         ftp://wuarchive.wustl.edu/mirrors/msdos/graphics/gifkit.zip
         ftp://spy:[email protected]/pub/topsecret/weapon.tgz
         mailto:[email protected]
         news:alt.hypertext
         telnet://dra.com
     
        The part before the first colon specifies the access scheme or
        {protocol}.  Commonly implemented schemes include: {ftp},
        {http} (World-Wide Web), {gopher} or {WAIS}.  The "file"
        scheme should only be used to refer to a file on the same
        host.  Other less commonly used schemes include {news},
        {telnet} or mailto ({e-mail}).
     
        The part after the colon is interpreted according to the
        access scheme.  In general, two slashes after the colon
        introduce a {hostname} (host:port is also valid, or for {FTP}
        user:passwd@host or user@host).  The {port} number is usually
        omitted and defaults to the standard port for the scheme,
        e.g. port 80 for HTTP.
     
        For an HTTP or FTP URL the next part is a {pathname} which is
        usually related to the pathname of a file on the server.  The
        file can contain any type of data but only certain types are
        interpreted directly by most {browsers}.  These include {HTML}
        and images in {gif} or {jpeg} format.  The file's type is
        given by a {MIME} type in the HTTP headers returned by the
        server, e.g. "text/html", "image/gif", and is usually also
        indicated by its {filename extension}.  A file whose type is
        not recognised directly by the browser may be passed to an
        external "viewer" {application}, e.g. a sound player.
     
        The last (optional) part of the URL may be a query string
        preceded by "?" or a "fragment identifier" preceded by "#".
        The later indicates a particular position within the specified
        document.
     
        Only alphanumerics, reserved characters (:/?#"<>%+) used for
        their reserved purposes and "$", "-", "_", ".", "&", "+" are
        safe and may be transmitted unencoded.  Other characters are
        encoded as a "%" followed by two {hexadecimal} digits.  Space
        may also be encoded as "+".  Standard {SGML} "&;"
        character entity encodings (e.g. "é") are also accepted
        when URLs are embedded in HTML.  The terminating semicolon may
        be omitted if & is followed by a non-letter character.
     
        {The authoritative W3C URL specification
        (http://www.w3.org/hypertext/WWW/Addressing/Addressing.html)}.
     
        (2000-02-17)