3.2.3 URI Comparison

When comparing two URIs to decide if they match or not, a client SHOULD use a case-sensitive octet-by-octet comparison of the entire URIs, with these exceptions:

• A port that is empty or not given is equivalent to the default port for that URI;

• Comparisons of host names MUST be case-insensitive;

• Comparisons of scheme names MUST be case-insensitive;

• An empty abs_path is equivalent to an abs_path of "/".

Characters other than those in the "reserved" and "unsafe" sets (see section 3.2) are equivalent to their ""%" HEX HEX" encodings.

For example, the following three URIs are equivalent:

         http://abc.com:80/~smith/home.html
         http://ABC.com/%7Esmith/home.html
         http://ABC.com:/%7esmith/home.html