Changing "/" to "%2f" in URL doesn't work

Question

I have an orchard site and have the following problem:

If I use the URL: http://asiahotelct.com/tours/ct---chau-%C4%91oc---ha-tien-3n2%C4%91, it's okay. But when I change url the / to %2f (like so: http://asiahotelct.com/tours%2fct---chau-%C4%91oc---ha-tien-3n2%C4%91), it no longer works.

Why can / not be replaced by %2f?

Challenge

/ is a path separator. %2f is a character that will eventually convert into a /, but is NOT a path separator. – Ladyship

possible duplicate of %2F in URL breaks and does not reference to the .php file required – Morpheme

The subtle difference between %2F versus / was the architect of all my pain while I was trying to make my curl bash script work for gitlab.com REST API. – Corpus

Not an answer to the question, but how to get it work: Use a parameter: asiahotelct.com/tours?id=ct---chau-%C4%91oc---ha-tien-3n2%C4%91 will work. – Corposant

Answer 1

Any url is a kind of complete address to some resource(file) in network. But according to the rules of how it must be actually (to work as you expect), its expected that a few characters must have some specific meaning; just like in this case: "/" means a separator that separates the individual elements of your address(url).

But in case you need such specific characters to be a part of any such element of address(url), we must encode it. List of codes

URL encoding converts characters into a format that can be transmitted over the Internet. - w3Schools

So, "/" is actually a seperator, but "%2f" becomes an ordinary character that simply represents "/" character in element of your url.

Gas