A URL is a formatted text string used by Web browsers, email clients and other software to identify a network resource on the Internet. Network resources are files that can be plain Web pages, other text documents, graphics, or programs.
URL strings consist of three parts (substrings):
1. Network protocol - defines a network protocol to be used to access a resource. Example, Http.
2. Hostname or address - identifies a computer or other network device. It can be names or IP addresses. For example, facebook.com.
3. File or resource location - The ‘location’ substring contains a path to one specific network resource on the host.
These substrings are separated by special characters as follows:
protocol:// host/location
for Example: http://www.computerhope.com/cgi-bin/search.cgi
