Problem opening a web page in firefox that has a hyphen "-" character.

[Peter Garrett]

On Sun, 30 Jul 2006 19:49:09 -0400
Scott Kitterman <ubuntu at kitterman.com> wrote:

> On Sunday 30 July 2006 18:10, Frank Pessers wrote:
> > Hi everybody,
> >
> > I have got a problem with opening web page's that contain a hypen sign.
> > These are webpages like:
> >
> > http://-noorah-.hyves.nl/
> >
> > With IE I can open this page. Is this also possible with firefox?
> >
> >
> > Greetings Pezz
> 
> I assume you mean using IE with Windows?  I tried it with Firefox and IE using 
> Crossover Office 5.0.3 on Dapper and it didn't work with either one.  
> Konqueror doesn't work either.
> 
> I took a quick look at RFC 1035, which I believe is the authoritative 
> reference and I believe that's a valid domain name (I'm not an expert).  If 
> so, it's a bug.

I had a look at the RFC you cite and found this:

"Note that while upper and lower case letters are allowed in domain
names, no significance is attached to the case.  That is, two names with
the same spelling but different case are to be treated as if identical.

The labels must follow the rules for ARPANET host names.  They must
start with a letter, end with a letter or digit, and have as interior
characters only letters, digits, and hyphen.  There are also some
restrictions on the length.  Labels must be 63 characters or less."

So I wonder if a leading hyphen is allowed? I notice that although "
nslookup" was able to give the hyves.nl domain in answer to a query using
the -noorah-.hyves.nl name, the error given by the Dillo browser, which is
notoriously picky about correct compliance, is "ERROR: Dns can't solve
-noorah-.hyves.nl "

Interesting peculiarity :) Google was not particularly helpful on the
subject of leading hyphens in URLs, but perhaps I used the wrong search
terms...

Peter