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Comment by bscphil | Hacker News Reader

Dumb question: the lengthener prepends the URL with "\x20\x0b" strings which are then not removed on the other end. So the link inserted in the <meta> redirect ends up looking like

    " \x0b \x0b \x0bhttps://www.example.org"

But this apparently works! Why does it work?

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so what you're seeing is the creation of a zero width space. When you combine an \x20 and an \x0b, it makes a zero width space, which your browser ends up ignoring. Only reason these are in there are to ensure the URLs are at a minimum length. Who wants a mere 20 character URL when you can have a minimum of 250 characters.

Thanks!

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