RFC 3492 (rfc3492) - Page 1 of 35
Punycode: A Bootstring encoding of Unicode for Internationalized Domain Names in Applications (IDNA)
Alternative Format: Original Text Document
Network Working Group A. Costello
Request for Comments: 3492 Univ. of California, Berkeley
Category: Standards Track March 2003
Punycode: A Bootstring encoding of Unicode
for Internationalized Domain Names in Applications (IDNA)
Status of this Memo
This document specifies an Internet standards track protocol for the
Internet community, and requests discussion and suggestions for
improvements. Please refer to the current edition of the "Internet
Official Protocol Standards" (STD 1) for the standardization state
and status of this protocol. Distribution of this memo is unlimited.
Copyright Notice
Copyright (C) The Internet Society (2003). All Rights Reserved.
Abstract
Punycode is a simple and efficient transfer encoding syntax designed
for use with Internationalized Domain Names in Applications (IDNA).
It uniquely and reversibly transforms a Unicode string into an ASCII
string. ASCII characters in the Unicode string are represented
literally, and non-ASCII characters are represented by ASCII
characters that are allowed in host name labels (letters, digits, and
hyphens). This document defines a general algorithm called
Bootstring that allows a string of basic code points to uniquely
represent any string of code points drawn from a larger set.
Punycode is an instance of Bootstring that uses particular parameter
values specified by this document, appropriate for IDNA.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction...............................................2
1.1 Features..............................................2
1.2 Interaction of protocol parts.........................3
2. Terminology................................................3
3. Bootstring description.....................................4
3.1 Basic code point segregation..........................4
3.2 Insertion unsort coding...............................4
3.3 Generalized variable-length integers..................5
3.4 Bias adaptation.......................................7
4. Bootstring parameters......................................8
5. Parameter values for Punycode..............................8
6. Bootstring algorithms......................................9
Costello Standards Track