Why does decodeURIComponent('%') lock up my browser?

Question

I was just testing something with AJAX and I found that on success if I alert

alert(decodeURI(\'%\'));

or

alert(encodeURIC         


        

Answer 1

The endless-loop or lock up may be due to a bug in jquery.

You can set a breakpoint in jquery at a point which is likely causing the 'lock-up'.

Decode doesn't make sense with just % provided, as percent-encoding is followed by alphanumericals referring to a given character in the ASCII table, and should normally yield an URIError in Opera, Chrome, FF.

Use the browser built in function encodeURI if you are looking for the 'url-encoded' notation of the percent-character:

encodeURI('%')
//>"%25"