URLlike

URLlike is an adjective used in computing to describe strings, identifiers, or tokens that resemble the syntax of a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) but may not function as a retrievable web address. In practice, URLlike values may be absolute URLs, relative URLs, or strings that begin with a known scheme such as http, https, ftp, mailto, or custom schemes, yet they may be incomplete, non-resolvable, or used in non-network contexts.

The term is often used in data validation, input handling, text processing, and content linking to distinguish authentic URLs from similar-looking text such as file paths, email addresses, or pseudo-URL placeholders. When analyzing or processing URLlike strings, parsers may attempt to recognize a scheme, authority, path, query, and fragment components. However, being URLlike is not a guarantee of validity or accessibility.

Applications include link extraction, URL auto-linking in text, templating engines, and data models that store resource locators alongside other identifiers. Security and reliability considerations include ensuring proper escaping to prevent injection, validating or whitelisting allowed schemes, and not auto-following potentially untrusted URLs. URLlike recognition is often software-specific and may be implemented via regular expressions, canonicalization rules, or URI parsers.

Related concepts include URL, URI, and URN, as well as standards such as RFC 3986 that define URI syntax. The term clarifies when a string should be treated as sort of link-like data rather than plain text.