Hello,
as reported at http://mail.python.org/pipermail/docs/2013-January/012375.html urlparse fails to parse URLs without a schema and with a url path, as opposed to what's documented at http://docs.python.org/2/library/urlparse.html?highlight=urlparse#urlparse :

./python -c "from urlparse import urlparse ; print(urlparse('python.org:80/'))"
ParseResult(scheme='python.org', netloc='', path='80/', params='', query='', fragment='')

(that is for 2.7, but the same happens on all the 3.x active branches).

i'm attaching a test to expose this failure.

Adding Senthil as per expert list

This is not a bug: urlparse is there to parse URLs, and URLs start with an URL scheme such as "http:".

There is no way for a generic URL parser to know that "python.org:80/" is supposed to be "http://python.org:80/".

The documentation reports this example:

>>> urlparse('www.cwi.nl:80/%7Eguido/Python.html')
ParseResult(scheme='', netloc='', path='www.cwi.nl:80/%7Eguido/Python.html',
           params='', query='', fragment='')

but when executing it returns:

$ ./python -V
Python 2.7.3+
$ ./python -c "from urlparse import urlparse ; print urlparse('www.cwi.nl:80/%7Eguido/Python.html')"
ParseResult(scheme='www.cwi.nl', netloc='', path='80/%7Eguido/Python.html', params='', query='', fragment='')

which doesn't match.

Hmm, you're right. The behavior has been like this at least since Python 2.5:

Python 2.5.4 (r254:67916, Dec 16 2012, 20:33:12) 
[GCC 4.6.3] on linux3
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> from urlparse import urlparse
>>> urlparse('www.cwi.nl:80/%7Eguido/Python.html')
('www.cwi.nl', '', '80/%7Eguido/Python.html', '', '', '')

The docs refer to RFC 1808. From a quick glance at the BNF in section 2.2, RFC 1808 allows dots in the scheme, but also allows ":" in the path. So there seems to be a parsing ambiguity, but see section 2.4.2:

If the parse string contains a colon ":" after the first character
and before any characters not allowed as part of a scheme name (i.e.,
any not an alphanumeric, plus "+", period ".", or hyphen "-"), the
<scheme> of the URL is the substring of characters up to but not
including the first colon. These characters and the colon are then
removed from the parse string before continuing.

That would indicate that the implementation is correct and the documentation should be fixed. Senthil?

I am noticing this one late. Sorry for that.
I agree that this is docs issue and I would like to fix it in this way.

Give the doc example as:

>>> urlparse('www.cwi.nl/%7Eguido/Python.html')
ParseResult(scheme='', netloc='', path='www.cwi.nl/%7Eguido/Python.html', params='', query='', fragment='')

Instead of

>> urlparse('www.cwi.nl:80/%7Eguido/Python.html')

Which introduces a trick ":80" parsing and invokes the rule that Georg pointed out in the message. If I recollect, the point of the example was to point out that URLs (following 1808 RFC) should start with // for their netloc to be identified. Otherwise it is path.

A ":" on PORT without the "scheme :" is really tricky for any application, so it is right thing for the parser to identify anything before ":" as scheme and the implementation here is correct.

So, instead of fixing the example to identify the scheme as "www.cwi.nl" which is quite meaningless, the better way to fix the example will be, change the example to urlparse('www.cwi.nl/%7Eguido/Python.html') and the result remains the same.

I am going ahead with the fix. Thanks.

New changeset 33895c474b4d by Senthil Kumaran in branch '2.7':
Fix bpo-16932: Fix the urlparse example. Remote :port when scheme is not specified to demonstrate correct behavior
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/33895c474b4d

New changeset 5442a77b925c by Senthil Kumaran in branch '3.2':
Fix bpo-16932: Fix the urlparse example. Remote :port when scheme is not specified to demonstrate correct behavior
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/5442a77b925c

New changeset 8928205f57f6 by Senthil Kumaran in branch '3.3':
Fix bpo-16932: Fix the urlparse example. Remote :port when scheme is not specified to demonstrate correct behavior
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/8928205f57f6

New changeset 9caad461936e by Senthil Kumaran in branch 'default':
Fix bpo-16932: Fix the urlparse example. Remote :port when scheme is not specified to demonstrate correct behavior
http://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/9caad461936e

I have fixed the docs issue. Thanks for the report and following up.

New changeset 5a88d50 by Senthil Kumaran (Tim Graham) in branch 'master':
bpo-27657: Fix urlparse() with numeric paths (#661)
5a88d50

New changeset 82b5f6b by Miss Islington (bot) in branch '3.7':
bpo-27657: Fix urlparse() with numeric paths (GH-661)
82b5f6b

New changeset 0f3187c by Senthil Kumaran in branch '3.8':
[3.8] bpo-27657: Fix urlparse() with numeric paths (GH-661) (bpo-16839)
0f3187c