[leifg]

It seems like the colon is too ambiguous (is used as a protocol delimiter, delimiter for user/pass, delimiter for port).

Reminds a little bit of Java labels where you can do this:

  public class Labels {
    public static void main(String args[]){
        https://hn.ycombinator.com
        for(int i=0; i<10; i++){
            System.out.println("......."+i );
        }  
    }  
  }

the https: is a label named https and everything after the colon is a comment so this is valid code.

[jackewiehose]

> It seems like the colon is too ambiguous (is used as a protocol delimiter, delimiter for user/pass, delimiter for port).

and because that was still too boring they came up with ipv6

[mananaysiempre]

IIUC the IPv6 weirdness here is simply due to very unfortunate timing: IPv6 was being finalized at a time (first half of the 90s) when the Web (and with it URLs) was already nearly frozen but still not obviously important.

[chungy]

The colons also make IPv6 addresses unambiguous to IPv4 notation.

[gpvos]

Not in URLs, but related:

    Larry's 1st Law of Language Redesign: Everyone wants the colon
    Larry's 2nd Law of Language Redesign: Larry gets the colon

https://thelackthereof.org/Perl6_Colons