How does the URL on YouTube videos know that the unique part of the URL is case-sensitive?

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Whenever I go to YouTube or any website at all, it doesn’t matter if I write the website name in lowercase letters or uppercase letters, I will land on the same website. But whenever we go to a video and even replace 1 letter with lowercase or uppercase, the link doesn’t work.

How does the URL know that one section is not case-sensitive while the other section is case-sensitive?

I can understand why that’s the case. To keep the URLs unique. just in case something similar comes up. But what’s happening behind the scenes?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

The domain name is never case sensitive so [www.reddit.com](http://www.reddit.com) and WwW.RedDit.cOm and any other variant work the same way.

After the domain name and the / all the information is interpreted by the web server exactly how it is done will depend on how the website was built. The developers could have made the video ID so the case does not matter but they did not. The reason is in all likelihood that it gives you more possible identifiers with the same identifier length.

The developers of Reddit did not make the same choice so https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/17eeu1y/ and https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/17EEU1Y/ both tive yoy this thread. The end part “eli5_how_does_the_url_on_youtube_videos_know_that/” is not required

The developers just did it diffrently

So they know that the domain name part is always case-insensitive. They know how the rest works because you developed the website and dedicated how it works.

That all after the / is up to the developers is a bit of a simplification Look at [https://youtu.be/AiOUojVd6xQ?t=681](https://youtu.be/AiOUojVd6xQ?t=681)the ? is there to show the rest is a query and the variable t gets the value 681. What that man it up to the website it this chase it time = 681 seconds so you do not start int eh beginning of the video

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