URL Character Codes

Updated December 6, 2017 • One comment

URLs frequently employ potentially conflicting characters such as question marks, ampersands, and pound signs. Fortunately, it is possible to encode such characters via their escaped hexadecimal ASCII representations. For example, we would write ? as %3F. Here are a few more URL character codes (case-insensitive), for easy copy/paste reference.

< %3C
> %3E
# %23
% %25
{ %7B
} %7D
| %7C
\ %5C
^ %5E
~ %7E
[ %5B
] %5D
` %60
; %3B
/ %2F
? %3F
: %3A
@ %40
= %3D
& %26
$ %24
+ %2B
" %22
space %20

To convert back and forth between the encoded and unencoded characters, check out any free online tool such as Eric Meyer’s URL Decoder/Encoder.

About the Author

Jeff Starr = Web Developer. Security Specialist. WordPress Buff.

One response to “URL Character Codes”

August Klotz 2007/02/19 2:43 pm

You can also use Google to translate special URL characters. Simply search for the character and check within the search URL in your browser’s address field. The encoded URL character will be located between the "q=" parameter and the next "&" character (if any). Sometimes this comes in handy when working on the fly.

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August Klotz 2007/02/19 2:43 pm

You can also use Google to translate special URL characters. Simply search for the character and check within the search URL in your browser’s address field. The encoded URL character will be located between the "q=" parameter and the next "&" character (if any). Sometimes this comes in handy when working on the fly.