What Happens If File Name is Missing in a URL?

If the file name part is missing in a URL, the one of the following two rules will be used.

1. If a URL has no file name, but a path name is given, the browser will let the hosting computer to supply the default file name. On most hosting computers, the default file name will be index.html. For example, the following URLs:

  http://dev.fyicenter.com/faq/
  /faq/

will be treated as:

  http://dev.fyicenter.com/faq/index.html
  http://dev.fyicenter.com/faq/index.html

2. If a URL has no file name, no path name, but a bookmark or a querystring is given, the browser will borrow the path name and the file name from the current document. For example, if the following URLs are used in this document:

  ?q=xhtml+faq
  #footer

will be converted by the browser as:

  /faq/xhtml/xhtml_hyper_link_and_url.html?q=xhtml+faq
  /faq/xhtml/xhtml_hyper_link_and_url.html#footer

⇒HTML Hyper Links and URLs

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