Does a `+` in a URL scheme/host/path represent a space?

encoding, query-string, url

Solution

- Percent encoding in the path section of a URL is expected to be decoded, but

- any `+` characters in the path component is expected to be treated literally.

To be explicit: `+` is only a special character in the query component.

https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3986

Problem

I am aware that a `+` in the query string of a URL represents a space. Is this also the case outside of the query string region? That is to say, does the following URL: ``` http://a.com/a+b/c ``` actually represent: ``` http://a.com/a b/c ``` (and thus need to be encoded if it should actually be a `+`), or does it in fact actually represent `a+b/c`?

Original source

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