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Restrict characters in short URLs

644
4
05-10-2022 04:00 PM
Status: Open
BBurkholder
Occasional Contributor

Can some characters please be removed from the short URL generator? Having both O and 0 as possible characters in the URL makes sharing a challenge if users have to manually enter the URL. Neither should be used, IMO. Zero seems to be used a lot, for whatever reason.

I've tolerated this hiccup for years, but today I got a URL of https://arcg.is/0OKO0 (last character dropped for privacy). Not acceptable. I re-uploaded the file to get a better URL, but that's not always possible with some items.

Thanks!

4 Comments
RobertBorchert

You could switch your display font to Terminal or Consolas and it would show a zero with a slash through it .

 

BBurkholder

Yes @RobertBorchert, some fonts do make it easy to determine if 0 is zero, but capital o is still ambiguous if a user doesn't know which font they're looking at. We shouldn't need to account for this in sharing short URLs.

RobertBorchert

O00

I would suggest using copy paste to share urls 

BBurkholder

Although it's been a year and I wouldn't be surprised if this simple idea was never implemented, I'd like to add that if I had my druthers, the following would also be excluded: 1, I, l, (those are: number one, upper case i, and lower case L, for those playing at home). 

I've encountered 1 and i regularly, but upper & lower case L and upper case i may already be excluded? If so, why can't zero and upper case o be excluded from future short URLs?