Question 1

What characters need URL decoding?

Accepted Answer

Spaces become + or %20. Special chars: %21=!, %23=#, %26=&, %2F=/. Non-ASCII use %XX format. %3A=:, %3F=?. Encoded URLs are safe for web transmission.

Question 2

Why do URLs have percent signs and numbers?

Accepted Answer

URL encoding replaces unsafe/special characters with %XX (hex code). Spaces=%20, ampersand=%26, question=%3F. This prevents confusion with URL syntax characters and handles international text.

Question 3

What character encoding should I use?

Accepted Answer

UTF-8 is the modern standard - it handles all characters and is backward-compatible with ASCII. Use it unless you have specific legacy requirements.

Question 4

Will encoding/decoding change my data?

Accepted Answer

Proper encoding is reversible. However, using wrong encoding can corrupt special characters. Always use the same encoding for encode and decode.

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