url_encode: Best-effort host rewriting in a URL-shaped string (Unicode...

In punycoder: Unicode and Punycode Domain Name Processing

Best-effort host rewriting in a URL-shaped string (Unicode host to ASCII)

Description

Locates the host portion of a URL-shaped string with a hand-rolled splitter, ASCII-encodes that host, and substitutes it back, leaving the rest of the string untouched.

Usage

url_encode(url, strict = getOption("punycoder.strict", TRUE))

Arguments

url	Character vector of URL-shaped strings with potential Unicode hosts
strict	Logical; whether to apply strict validation. Defaults to getOption("punycoder.strict", TRUE).

Details

This is best-effort host extraction and rewriting, not URL parsing or canonicalization. It is deliberately not RFC 3986 / WHATWG URL conformant. Non-goals (handled upstack, e.g. by rurl): percent encoding/decoding, scheme validation, port/path/query semantics, full IPv6 (including zone IDs / RFC 6874), and URL serialization. Pass only the host to host_normalize() / puny_encode() when you control the parse; use this helper only for quick host rewriting in an already-trusted URL-shaped string.

Value

A character vector the same length as url, with each element containing the URL with its host portion ASCII-encoded. Only the domain component is transformed; scheme, path, query, and fragment are preserved. Elements corresponding to NA inputs are NA_character_.

Deprecated

This function is deprecated and slated for removal in a future release. For URL parsing and canonicalization use a dedicated URL package (e.g. rurl); for host-only encoding pass the host alone to host_normalize() or puny_encode().

See Also

url_decode for the reverse operation, puny_encode for domain-only encoding, parse_url for URL component extraction.

Examples

# Basic URL encoding
url_encode("https://caf\u00E9.example.com/path?query=value")
url_encode(
  "https://\u043C\u043E\u0441\u043A\u0432\u0430.\u0440\u0444/page"
)

# Vectorized URL encoding
urls <- c(
  "https://caf\u00E9.com/menu",
  "https://\u5317\u4EAC.\u4E2D\u56FD/info"
)
url_encode(urls)

punycoder documentation built on July 20, 2026, 1:07 a.m.