Nested jar: URI

Question

The format of the jar: URI scheme is simply defined to be jar:<url>!/[<entry>].

Is it possible to "nest" two such URIs together and refer to a file inside an archive inside an archive this way? Something like:

jar:jar:http://example.com/!/archive!/file

This should designate /file inside an archive jar:http://example.com/!/archive, that is /archive found in a file provided by http://example.com/. However, URL.openConnection throws an exception:

java.net.MalformedURLException: no !/ in spec

I also cannot replace ! with %21 since that makes the jar: URI invalid, and I am not aware of any escaping that could be performed. Is this somehow possible? Or, as a more generic question, is it possible to store a URI with !/ inside <url> so that it is preserved?

Answer 1

While the other answer is indeed correct in the case of JarURLConnection, the use of jar: and similar URIs is not restricted to it. Such is the case of the Apache Commons VFS:

jar:// arch-file-uri[! absolute-path]

Where arch-file-uri refers to a file of any supported type, including other zip files. Note: if you would like to use the ! as normal character it must be escaped using %21.

"Normal character" means usage of the character in path to the file inside the archive, not in the inner URI. This makes jar:jar:http://example.com/!/archive!/file valid, as it is the last occurence of ! that should be used as a delimiter.

Note that the inner URI should probably still remain unescaped, thus it is impossible to use # there.