Special characters

Certain reserved and special characters can cause problems when they appear in a URL.

When you need to use one in a URL, substitute its URL-encoded (that is, its percent-encoded) value. The URL encoded value is the Hex value of the character, prepended with a %. For example, the URL encoded value of + is %2B.

Specifically, substitute URL encoded values within each individual URL parameter that contains reserved characters. (That is, do not encode the whole URL, because doing so also would encode possible ? and & characters, thereby changing the semantics of the URL.)

Note: We do not recommend that you use special characters or spaces in function names and parameter names, but if you do, you must also escape any special characters these names.

Special characters requiring escape substitution

Character      Escape substitution
space %20
+ %2B
% %25
& %26
\ %5C
$ %24
, %2C
/ %2F
: %3A
; %3B
= %3D
? %3F
" %22
< %3C
> %3E
# %23
{ %7B
} %7D
| %7C
^ %5E
~ %7E
[ %5B
] %5D
` %60
' %27
( %28
) %29
@ %40