URLs in CSS

[lucy24]

I just found this in archived logs. If checklink has been updated since January 2021, the issue may no longer exist.

Request, as part of link checking for a page:

128.30.52.138 - - [16/Jan/2021:13:22:09 -0800] "HEAD /ebooks/second/images/backline.png%22),%20no-repeat%20center%20bottom%20/%206em%202px%20url(%22images/backline.png HTTP/1.1" 200 342 "http://example.com/ebooks/second/" "W3C-checklink/5.0.0"

See all that extraneous stuff with %22 (quotation mark) and %20 (space)? I traced it to this line in CSS:

p.booksellers {padding-top: .5em; padding-bottom: .5em; background: no-repeat center top / 6em 2px url("images/backline.png"), no-repeat center bottom / 6em 2px url("images/backline.png");}

It looks as if checklink doesn't know about multiple background layers. So instead of asking for each url separately, it treated everything between the first quotation mark and the last one as a single vast url.

In this particular case it did no harm, as both layers involve the same image, and the server's PathInfo settings mean the request netted a 200. But the relevant code should probably be tweaked anyway.