Yes it is an invalid character but clicking on the link in the original post demonstrates that perhaps it should be the browser that filters it out instead of mIRC. No browser I used specifically rejected the URL.
i just now realized why you said that.
ubbthreads has a similar issue with its parsing of URLs
if i post,
http://www.example.com it will be clickable because ubb parses it and makes it a URL
<http://www.example.com> is not clickable
<http://www.example.com>joe isnt clickable, as it shouldnt be (it is being argued that it should find text in < > as a URL)
now, we use
http://www.example.com>; or even
http://www.example.com> and lo and behold, its clickable and returns an invalid URL (adding the >; or >)
UBB also doesnt follow the RFC properly.
all of this text is typed in as plain text, no fancy formating or UBB code or anything
btw, what browser do you use? this does the same in IE and Firefox, the two most popular browsers out there.
Last but not least, this is an example of a valid URL parser correctly parsing text
http://sourceforge.net/forum/message.php?msg_id=2860017
